Press Scam

Monday's Wichita Eagle had a front page story which obliquely
mentioned Israel's attack on Qana, Lebanon, that killed "at least
56 Lebanese, almost all of them women and children." The headline
was "No truce, but Israel suspends airstrikes." Evidently, someone
put out a press release that Israel would suspend air attacks for
48 hours while they "investigated" the "mistake." The follow-up
article in Tuesday's newspaper was buried on page four, titled,
"Israel's leader: There will not be cease-fire." Key quote:

Early today, Israeli warplanes struck deep inside Lebanon, hitting
an area that is a stronghold of Hezbollah guerrillas, witnesses said.

Evidently that press release didn't get to Israel's cabinet or
the IDF, even though the Wichita Eagle managed to get on top of it.
As a piece of press control, it was remarkable: bumping the atrocity
off the front page with a totally fake peace gesture. Funny thing
is, Hezbollah got the press release too. For all of Monday, they
responded by not firing a single rocket into northern Israel. Gwen
Ifill commented on PBS, "Nobody knows what that means." Well, I'd
draw two conclusions from it: Hezbollah is the only party in this
fight that is willing to step back and maintain a real cease fire;
and Israel and the US are being duplicitous about what they're up
to and why.

For instance, Billmon quotes Bush, following the Qana massacre,
as saying:

Today's actions in the Middle East remind us that the United
States and friends and allies must work for a sustainable peace,
particularly for the sake of children.

The cognitive dissonance here is clearly addling some brains.
The only way to sustain peace is to start by being peaceable,
which means putting an immediate halt to the violence that only
begets more violence. First establish unconditional ceasefire,
then start to work through the differences. What this particular
episode shows is that there is at least one party to the conflict
that is capable of acting with discipline and responsibility --
Hezbollah. We should also take note that neither Syria nor Iran
have responded belligerently to taunts and provocations by Israel
and the US. The cognitive problem we have here in America is that
most of us have been convinced that Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah
are fanatics who only have one thing on their mind: the killing
of Jews and Crusaders. But the news reports, even biased as they
are, don't bear that out. Rather, what we're seeing is that the
side that attacks most indiscriminately, that clearly cares the
least about civilians, that seems most emphatically dedicated to
eradicating its opponents, is the side of Israel and the US.
It's going to be hard to wrap our brains around this reality,
but it's hard to deny once you consider the possibility.

We got the following question from Diane Wahto, in response to a
proposal that the Peace and Social Justice Center here issue a call
for an immediate, unconditional ceasefire: "One more question--how
do we answer questions about the avowed intent of both Hezzbollah
and Hamas to wipe Israel off the map?" I wrote, well, more than I
really needed to in response:

I'm not sure what the whole history of this assertion is, but regardless
of whether there is a kernel of truth in it somewhere, this is more myth
than anything else, propagated to imply that any opposition to Israel is
an existential threat, with overtones of the Holocaust. That abject horror,
in turn, serves to justify any act on the part of Israel to defend itself.

You will recall a big brouhaha over Iran's president Ahmadinejad's threats
"to wipe Israel off the map." Juan Cole posted several blog pieces where
he went back to the original Farsi and showed how Ahmadinejad had said no
such thing. Even so, Ahmadinejad recanted his comments, but you probably
didn't hear much about that.

The traditional anti-Israeli rejectionist position is couched in rather
abstract terms. Israel is referred to as "the Zionist entity", which
actually refers back to the pre-Israeli Yishuv (Hebrew for settlement,
but it was more like a corporation that functioned as a state within
the state), although I expect that the meaning is more abstract. Today
the term "Jewish state" suffices. If Israel is a real nation with both
Jewish and Arab citizens -- we tend to think of nations as geographic
entities with diverse citizenships -- the Jewish State is an abstraction
that signifies inequality and the dominance of Jews over Arabs. The point
of the rejectionist position is to reject the legitimacy of the Jewish
State a/k/a the Zionist Entity. If one is precise about such distinctions,
one can oppose the Jewish State/Zionist Entity without threatening any
Jews. In practice this is hard to do because the Zionists are armed and
aggressive. The primary evidence for this is the 1947-49 Nakba -- Arabic
for disaster, the result of the Zionist War for Independence -- when the
Zionist militias committed a number of atrocities and drove some 700,000
Palestinians into exile. History since then repeatedly reinforces this
perception.

Early on there was some talk about "driving the Jews into the sea" --
the other great, endlessly repeated cliche of the conflict -- but such
talk effectively ceased with the Arab defeat in 1967. From that point
on, neighboring Arab countries embraced the UN position: that Israel
must return the lands took in the war, and that the other nations must
recognize and peacefully coexist with Israel. The main holdout at that
point were Palestinian organizations like the PLO whose right of return
was still in contention. Even so, the PLO offered to recognize Israel
in the mid-'80s, leading eventually to the whole Oslo travesty. Hamas
took the position that the PLO recognition of Israel without Israel's
recognition of the legitimate rights of Palestinians leads nowhere --
which certainly looks like a position that has been vindicated by
history. On the other hand, especially since winning the elections,
Hamas has been moving toward a long-term rapprochement with Israel
within its legitimate, pre-1967 borders. Israel effectively quashed
this movement by strangling the Palestinian Authority of funds and
supplies, by repeatedly shelling the territories, and by military
invasion the moment they were given a provocative incident.

As a practical matter, Hamas has no capability to drive Israel out of
Gaza, let alone Israel proper. The "threat" of Hamas withholding its
recognition of Israel's legitimacy should be evaluated in terms of
what Hamas is practically capable of doing about it, which for all
intents and purposes is nothing. Israel, on the other hand, is at
least as guilty of refusing to recognize Palestinian rights, and as
we've all seen, Israel is capable of inflicting massive violence
whenever it wishes. Both views may be equivalent in some abstract
moral sense, but as a practical matter the difference is huge. I
would also argue that in real moral terms the difference is also
huge: Israel, with its far greater power, is capable of acting in
ways that reduce conflict and move toward reconciliation, whereas
Hamas, with very little power and active resistance and disruption
from Israel, has no such option. In this sense, at least, Israel is
responsible for continuation of the conflict, regardless of who was
responsible for starting it.

As for Hezbollah, I think it's pretty clear that their concerns are
focused within Lebanon, which they seek to defend from Israel, and
not on Israel proper. Before this phase of the conflict erupted,
Israel still occupied a small sliver of Lebanese territory, and
Israel still detained several hundred Lebanese prisoners. Israel
had invaded Lebanon several times, including an 18-year occupation
from 1982-2000, and threatened to do so again. Israel recognizes
neither the government of Lebanon or its borders, and feel free
to fly over Lebanon, to fire into Lebanon, to stage commando raids
to abduct Lebanese, and to threaten massive assaults. Hezbollah
attempted to deter Israeli attacks by building up a sizable cache
of weapons, including rockets that could be fired into Israel to
at least partially counter Israel's firepower. Obviously, they
don't have nearly enough such weapons to actually deter Israel.

As far as I can tell, Hezbollah's position on Israel is simply the
reflection of Israel's position on Hezbollah. If Israel were to
make peace with Lebanon and settle their differences -- borders,
prisoners, the Palestinian refugees' right of return (many are
in Lebanon, where they are denied citizenship), and the overall
threat to Lebanon's security -- Hezbollah's militia would cease
to have any rationale to exist. That may be a tall order, but
there's nothing on this list that shouldn't be done in principle.
Meanwhile, all evidence indicates that Hezbollah is pragmatic:
their military force is positioned defensively at Israel, and not
offensively, so a peaceful Israel has no reason to feel itself
threatened. It's also noteworthy that Hezbollah's political aims
are sought within Lebanon's democratic system and not through the
militia. This is sensible -- Hezbollah is by far the strongest
militia in the country, but if they tried to exploit that edge
they'd plunge Lebanon back into civil war, which would weaken
their ability to defend against Israel. Tolerance of and support
for Hezbollah within Lebanon is therefore dependent on their
ability to control their appetites. That's a rare trait for a
supposed terrorist group.

I've run on quite a bit here, so let me try to boil this down to
an answer: Until Israel learns to respects its neighboring nations,
their people, and the people who live under Israel's own control,
Israel is not entitled to demand that those people regard Israeli
power as legitimate.

Music: Current count 12183 [12141] rated (+42), 891 [900] unrated (-9).
Moved off Jazz Consumer Guide onto Recycled Goods, making a hard push
there, as well as rushing through a pile of stuff from the library, so
I've worked through a huge pile of material without doing much better
than treading water. Recycled Goods is off to the editor now, so should
be up by the end of the week. Got enough left over that September is
damn near done. Also turned in an initial column for F5 -- more on that
later.

Beck: Guero (2005, Interscope): This sounds more
like Mellow Gold than any of his more recent albums, but
lacks anything like "Loser" that actually makes you notice or care.
B+(**)

Bloc Party: Silent Alarm (2005, Vice): Consistently
listenable English alt-rock group, maybe post-punk, if you consider
Wire punk. Don't have any sense of lyrics; Christgau's one-liner
suggests some dubious politics or whatever, which I'll have to
reserve judgment on. Many other critics put this record on their
year-end lists, and their position is equally plausible. Don't have
time for a real answer, hence the hedge. B+(***)

Delaney & Bonnie: Home (1968-69 [2006],
Stax): The original Americana group, coming up with a mature
synthesis of blues, country, gospel, and rock 'n' roll with
amiable husband-and-wife voices and a growing cadre of friends;
this was recorded before but released after their more polished
The Original Delaney & Bonnie: Accept No Substitute
(Elektra, reissued on Collectors' Choice), and shows some of
the usual growing pains, aggravated by six "bonus" cuts.
B+(**)

Ani DiFranco: Knuckle Down (2005, Righteous Babe):
Strikes me as a partial comeback after a string of albums not ready
for prime time yet -- reads more Joni-introspective than ever, but
with her more distinctive guitar work, hence her sound.
B+(*)

Allen Ginsberg: First Blues (1971-81 [2006], Water,
2 CD):
One of the few people I can fairly describe as a hero in my teenage
years: I had a poster of him that I pasted up above the stairs, so
securely that when I moved away from home my mother, who only knew
that she hated the beard, could only paint over it. I read all of
his poetry -- "Howl" was my imagined life, but "Wichita Vortex Sutra"
hit particularly close to home, not least for its local detail. But
somehow I never knew that he recorded music -- sung even. I knew he
recorded records, and I knew of other poets who ventured into music --
thinking here more of Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg than Leonard
Cohen or Rod McKuen, but that was my taste in poetry. So I found
this even more startling than you will. The first surprise is that
the main singer on the 1971 sessions sounds an awful lot like Bob
Dylan. But Ginsberg takes over a few cuts in, and while the music
comes from many places, the words could hardly be anyone else --
good example: "CIA Dope Calypso." Some of this is dated, although
a better word is historical. And some, like "Gay Lib Rag," seems
still pitched far in the future. The booklet provides vital notes
and photos.
A-

Allen Ginsberg: Kaddish (1964 [2006], Water):
More like I expected a Ginsberg record to be: the poet reading
one of his longest poems, a hard-eyed, rough-tongued elegy for
his late mother Naomi; a writer, not an actor, it takes a while
for Ginsberg to find a voice that works, his occasional attempts
at dramatization hit and miss; but the words never let up, even
running long at 63:45.
B+(**)

David J: Crocodile Tears and the Velvet Cosh
(1985 [2006], Plain): Former leader of gothic rock band Bauhaus,
later leader of mainstream rock band Love and Rockets, here just
an English singer-songwriter working in a mildly folkish mode,
with little adornment. B

David J: On Glass: The Singles (1983-85 [2006],
Plain): At least he understands that singles need a little more
punch, which moves him closer to David Bowie than to Nick Drake --
an improvement, I'd say; "Crocodile Tears and the Velvet Cosh" is
much clearer and sharper here, but "Fear Is a Man's Best Friend"
makes me wonder whether his ballad phase wasn't another trailing
of John Cale. B+(*)

Alicia Keys: The Diary of Alicia Keys (2001, J):
Second album, after the widely admired Songs in A Minor,
got a mixed reception. Sounds OK by me.
B+(*)

Los Lobos: The Ride (2004, Hollywood/Mammoth):
I saw them in New York shortly after this came out. The joint was
hot. The band was loud. I spent most of the time lurking back in
the hall, trying to escape. Not that I thought that they were so
bad. Just reminded me how little appeal live music has for me.
In the course of the concert, there were songs I recognized and
songs I didn't. These sound like the ones I didn't. Heard at more
moderate volume in the comfort of my room they're not bad. But I
couldn't really have heard this there because most of the songs
have featured guests. This didn't really sink in until I heard one
that sounded too much like Richard Thompson. Then Elvis Costello
singing "Matter of Time" -- not a good sign that the best thing
here isn't new, but not a bad way to keep going either. B+(**)

Boban Markovic Orkestar feat. Marko Markovic: The Promise
(2005 [2006], Piranha): Subtitled "the king of Balkan brass" -- not sure
if that refers to the band, which counts eight horns, its reigning trumpet
master Boban, or his son, the featured 18-year-old Marko; in any case,
the sheer brass power and virtuosic flights are hard to argue with, but
the Gypsy swing was more evident on the previous Boban I Marko,
or maybe that was just the element of surprise. B+(***)

A Use Guide to They Might Be Giants (1986-2002
[2005], Elektra/Rhino):
Taking their name from a too-clever-by-half George C. Scott movie,
probably because it is so clever, John Flansburgh and John Linnell
popped up in 1986 with their eponymous album: eighteen songs, each
a brilliant tooling of some small hook with a clever twist. It was
a barrel of wit, a tour de force. Never again did they wait long
enough to come up with such a consistently amazing set, but that's
what best-ofs are for. Three songs here from that first album still
stand out, but 26 more from the better part of two decades hence
sidle in beside them, most equally clever, some quite astonishing.
Choice cut: a science lecture set to cartoon music, "Why Does the
Sun Shine? (The Sun Is a Mass of Incandescent Gas)."
A

U2: How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (2004, Interscope):
I've never been a fan -- I bought their early albums in recognition of
producer Brian Eno, who otherwise had been pretty reliable. I've heard
maybe half of their records -- none more than a couple of spins, even
those I own and am rather fond of, like Rattle and Hum. This is
from the library. Gave it a single spin, and like it enough that I
wouldn't mind another.
B+(**)

Tom Waits: Real Gone (2004, Anti-): Hard sometimes,
especially in the one-shot prospecting I often do with stuff scrounged
from the library, to distinguish between his usual shtick and his
transcendent shtick, but the clue here is how memorable the closing
sequence of songs are, especially "Make It Rain." I'm still hedging
here, but this could go higher. B+(***)

Jazz Prospecting (CG #11, Part 1)

The Voice has my tenth Jazz Consumer Guide column now. It's been
edited, and is ready to go. Don't have a publication date yet --
sometime in August, I've been told. Started to do some prospecting
for next time, but I had to shift gears to fill out the August
Recycled Goods column, and that's reflected here.

Stephen Stubbs: Teatro Lirico (2004 [2006], ECM New
Series): Actually classical music -- sonatas and dances from 17th
century Italy and Slovakia -- but as long as ECM sends these I'll
take a shot at prospecting them. Stubbs plays baroque guitar and
chitarrone in a quartet with violin, viola and harp, or at least
period variations on those instruments. I'm finding this quite
lovely, although the calm veneer and lack of beat -- or should
I say, the stately pulse? -- eventually dull my interest a bit.
B+(***)

Nancy Wilson: Turned to Blue (2005-06 [2006],
MCG Jazz): The first thing to say is that she is in fine voice.
That isn't new, but it's rarely been sufficient. The second thing
is that the arrangements, except for the closer with Dr. Billy
Taylor and a gaggle of strings, are pretty clean and unobtrusive --
even the All Star Big Band, which swings three cuts. Each of the
cuts have featured soloists, mostly making their only appearance.
By far the best combination is James Moody and the big band on
"Taking a Chance on Love," but Tom Scott has a good turn as well.
The title cut was stitched together from a Dr. Maya Angelou poem --
the honorific makes a nice bookend with Dr. Billy -- but it's of
below average interest. Toyed with the idea of leaving this open,
but realistically it's never gonna lift those strings very high,
nor that poetry, and if Tom Scott's a plus the average ain't all
that high. But she does sound good, and checking my database --
not all that deep on her -- this is her best record yet.
B

Tania Maria: Intimidade (2004 [2006], Blue Note):
A Brazilian jazz singer-pianist with roots in the bossa nova of the
'60s, I'm struck first by the depth of her voice -- don't know how
much is age as she approaches sixty -- then by the lithe ease of
the percussion. Hard to tell at this point what distinguishes her,
as this fits the expectations so nicely.
B+(**)

Wesla Whitfield: Livin' on Love (2005-06 [2006],
High Note): Standards singer, has recorded extensively since 1987.
This was recorded in two sessions, one with an octet, the other
with a quartet, both arranged and led by longtime collaborator
Mike Greensill, both featuring Gary Foster on various saxes and
flutes. The difference between the two groups is a set of four
French horns. I think she's a good singer, and I like Foster, at
least on tenor sax, but I don't see much value here -- although
the only real annoyance is the hoked up version of "Alfie" with
all the French horns.
B

Freddy Cole: Because of You: Freddy Cole Sings Tony Bennett
(2006, High Note): Nat's little brother, 14 years younger, but seems
like another generation 40 years after Nat's death. His voice bears
a family resemblance, but is far from a carbon copy. Since it's hard
to describe him without reference to Nat, he inevitably gets the short
end of the stick. Comparing him to Bennett may or may not help: Tony
has a lushness to his voice that Freddy can't match, but Freddy can
handle the phrasing well enough. The songs avoid the most obvious
ones -- I'm not at all expert on Bennett, so that's all that my lack
of recognition reveals. The band, of course, is much better than
Bennett's usual backing, with Peter and Kenny Washington on bass
and drums and Houston Person on tenor sax.
B+(*)

Frank Morgan: Reflections (2005 [2006], High Note):
I suppose if I was real conscientious about this, I'd revisit his
discography and try to ascertain whether this is an exceptionally
good record for him or a merely typically good one. But I don't
have either the records or the time for that. In the pecking order
of Bird's children, Morgan ranks somewhere above Lou Donaldson but
way below Jackie McLean, and very likely below Phil Woods as well.
Where that puts him viz. Gigi Gryce is a question that requires
more precision than I can muster. But on its own terms, this is
an exceptionally elegant and mature slice of the bop -- not frantic
like in the '50s, but Morgan's past 70 now, more than entitled to
slow down and smell them roses. Nice, brisk start on "Walkin'";
two Monk songs that he wouldn't have tackled in the old days;
gorgeous closer on "Out of Nowhere." Quartet with Ronnie Mathews
on piano, Essiet Essiet on bass, and Billy Hart on drums. Lovely
tone throughout.
B+(***)

Billy Hart: Quartet (2005 [2006], High Note):
Hart's a drummer with a handful of albums under his own name and
something like 500 working for other people. I won't bore you with
a list, other than to note that it starts with Jimmy Smith in 1963,
and while it's more mainstream than not, the range is pretty wide.
Hart wrote four songs here, but he's more the honored leader than
the auteur here. The frontline players are saxophonist Mark Turner
and pianist Ethan Iverson, and this album has their sound(s) and
sense(s) all over it. Obviously some significant talent here, but
I'm not quickly tuning into the postbop whatever. Francis Davis
will review this for the Voice. I'm holding off.
[B+(**)]

Houston Person/Bill Charlap: You Taught My Heart to Sing
(2004 [2006], High Note): Naked duets. I keep wishing a bass would
enter and scurry these two along a bit, but when I focus I don't
mind so much. Need to focus more, but it's safe to say that the
individual talents you expect are present and accounted for, and
both musicians are mature enough to work together. Person continues
to sound fabulous.
[B+(***)]

Cedar Walton: One Flight Down (2006, High Note):
One thing that throws me off here is starting with two quartet
tracks with Vincent Herring on tenor sax, then dropping down to
a trio for the remainder. Liner note scribe Thomas Conrad tries
to work his way around this: "It is rare for an album to lose a
hot tenor saxophonist and become a piano trio date and immediately
escalate in intensity." Can't say as I noticed that shift -- maybe
it's not as intense as advertised -- but contrary to my prejudices
the trio strikes me as sharper. Still, this feels like two ideas
for albums shotgunned together.
B+(**)

Note:The Impulse Story is a series of eight single-artist
samplers from the Impulse Records story, plus a best-of and a 4-CD
box -- although I didn't get the latter. There's also a book, The
House That Trane Built, by Ashley Kahn. Don't have it either, but
I've thumbed through it in the bookstore, like the discography, and
generally figure it to be useful but inessential. In the following
reviews, sometimes I name an "alt-choice": this is an A- or better
album, on Impulse if not listed otherwise, which I offer as an
alternate choice to the compilation. Recycled Goods will also have
an "Other Impulses" section, listing recommended records not by
compilation artists.

Albert Ayler: The Impulse Story (1965-69 [2006],
Impulse): The patron saint of the avant-garde, a fearsome saxophonist
invoking the holy ghost. Earlier work on ESP, like Spiritual Unity,
is essential. This is for the curious a useful sampler into his last
scattered years, including his discoveries of bagpipes and the healing
force of the universe.
B+(**)

Gato Barbieri: The Impulse Story (1973-75 [2006],
Impulse): Argentine tenor saxophonist, emerged in the '60s on ESP
and Flying Dutchman, which has some classic examples of his whirling
dervish style. This excerpts four albums of Coltrane-ish powerhouse
sax over roiling Latin beats. Alt-choice: Latino America
(1973-74 [1997], 2CD), his first two chapters.
B+(***)

Alice Coltrane: The Impulse Story (1968-2000 [2006],
Impulse): Née Alice MacLeod, plays piano and harp, married the tenor
sax great in 1965, recorded seven albums 1968-73 after her husband's
death, then a comeback with son Ravi Coltrane after a long hiatus,
developed a major interest in Eastern spirituality that themed her
music. Two trio pieces with Rashied Ali -- one on harp, the other on
piano -- are most striking here, with her larger groups spacier, and
a slab of Stravinsky a little heavy-handed. Don't know her albums,
other than the comeback, but this seems like a useful sampler, with
subjects for further research.
B+(*)

John Coltrane: The Impulse Story (1961-67 [2006],
Impulse): So influential we might as well call the last forty years
the post-Coltrane era, but far less so before he moved to Impulse --
his earlier Atlantics are respected, as are his sessions with Miles
and Monk, but a lot of his early work is so-so. This has to cover
a lot of ground, some pretty far out, most worth exploring as much
greater length. Alt-choices: The Complete Africa/Brass Sessions
(1961, 2CD); The Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings
(1961, 4CD); Ballads (1962); Live at Birdland (1963);
Crescent (1964); A Love Supreme (1964); Plays
(1965); the complete quartet studio recordings are also in the giant
The Classic Quartet (1961-68, 8CD).
A-

Keith Jarrett: The Impulse Story (1973-76 [2006],
Impulse): The most productive years of Jarrett's career, with eight
albums by his American quartet -- Dewey Redman, Charlie Haden, Paul
Motian -- on Impulse, plus his European quartet and marathon solos
on ECM. This sampler should provide a useful distillation given
that most of the Impulses are only available on two boxes adding
up to nine CDs, but a better one would focus more squarely on the
tenor saxophonist, who sounds great when he gets the chance.
B+(***)

Charles Mingus: The Impulse Story (1963 [2006],
Impulse): A case of doing what you can with what you got, which
ain't much; Mingus cut three albums for Impulse in 1963: one was
difficult and challenging but brilliant, another was typically
first rate, and one solo piano -- not bad if you're curious.
This gives you a bit of each, making it useless. Alt-choices:
The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady (1963); Mingus
Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus (1963).
B-

Sonny Rollins: The Impulse Story (1965-66 [2006],
Impulse): Another slim slice from an all-time great, three albums
in the gap between his sporadic '60s work at RCA and his long tenure
with Milestone, but useful -- two good albums not real high on the
pecking order, and 25 minutes of East Broadway Run Down, his
most avant album ever; alt-choices: On Impulse (1965), and
the Oliver Nelson-arranged Alfie (1966), where a relatively
large band lets Newk call all the shots.
A-

Pharoah Sanders: The Impulse Story (1963-73
[2006], Impulse): Coltrane's first important disciple, reflected
in sound and style, but more importantly in direction, which
deflected from out only to orbit the earth, taking particular
interest in Africa and Asia. Four cuts may not seem like much
of a selection, but "The Creator Has a Master Plan," all 32:45,
the ugly along with the transcendent, is in better company here
than on Karma.
A-

Archie Shepp: The Impulse Story (1964-72 [2006],
Impulse): Aside from Coltrane, Shepp was the most important figure
to emerge on Impulse. More orthodox than Pharoah Sanders, possessing
an authoritative but unpretty tone, he worked the inside of the
avant-garde, and cultivated a black power consciousness leading to
attempts to bridge gospel, soul and free jazz; the best disc in this
series, because it pulls his disparate pieces together as a whole in
a way that the albums don't. Alt-coices: Four for Trane (1964);
Fire Music (1965), Attica Blues (1972).
A-

McCoy Tyner: The Impulse Story (1962-64 [2006],
Impulse): The pianist was 21 when he joined Coltrane, shortly
before Coltrane signed with Impulse. His first records under
his own name were the piano trios that figure large here, but
this is also fleshed out with cuts from other folks' records --
Coltrane, Elvin Jones, Art Blakey. Not all that well balanced,
but it has some moments, including quite a bit of piano.
B+(*)

The House That Trane Built: The Best of Impulse Records
(1961-76 [2006], Impulse): I don't know how to rate something like this,
where the choices are so broad and arbitrary one might as well be
listening to the radio; nine songs, all also on the 4-CD box, five
also on the artist comps, two more on my Other Impulses list (Oliver
Nelson, Earl Hines), which leaves nice work by Art Blakey and John
Handy -- the latter funktoon is actually a clever finale. Don't have
the box, or the book, but just reading the credits suggests that it's
somewhat more mainstream than the artist comps. Also looks to be
chronological, which won't help the flow of the music even if it
does benefit the book.
A-

Note: All of the Milestone Profiles come with a second
"bonus disc," a 44:57 various artists label sampler -- same one
with each package. As far as I'm concerned, it's worthless, but
with the packages priced at $11.98 list it arguably costs nothing --
assuming, of course, that a $10.98 or less list price is inconceivable,
even though such a price is obviously possible given the label's costs
in packaging this excess. So I'm simply ignoring it below -- not even
marking the packages as 2CD.

Sonny Rollins: Milestone Profiles (1972-2001 [2006],
Milestone): The first half of Newk's career was turbulent, with
several gaps when he broke off and regrouped, including six years from
when he left Impulse to his signing with Milestone. He spent the
second half touring, where he was notoriously hot and cold --
breathtaking one night, unsettled the next. His albums, roughly one
per year, were quickly tossed off, inconsistent with flashes of
brilliance. Gary Giddins tried to point these out in a review of a
mix tape he imagined. Milestone wanted to release a set to honor
Rollins' 25th anniversary with the label, so they compiled Giddins'
list as Silver City -- as magnificent as Saxophone
Colossus or Way Out West or any of his other
classics. Which should make this single redundant, but Rollins never
rests on his past: three of nine songs appeared in the decade after
Silver City, and they fit in seamlessly. No surprise
really. Rollins is easy to anthologize: his sound is unique but
consistent across decades, he totally dominates everyone he plays
with, and his refuses to fall back on himself, so he never slips
to cliché.
A

McCoy Tyner: Milestone Profiles (1972-80 [2006],
Milestone): This was his third label period, following stints on
Impulse and Blue Note, the '70s consolidated his reputation both
as a star pianist and as a composer with broad interests. What's
most striking here is how hard the piano sounds -- one solo and
two trio pieces are crashingly loud, while the horns on the rest
are hard pressed to keep up, even when they go into late-Coltrane
overload. It's like he's trying not to do fusion but to beat it
to death.
B+(*)

Jimmy Smith: Milestone Profiles (1981-93 [2006],
Milestone): His Blue Notes, starting in 1956, made the Hammond B3
the fulcrum of soul jazz, as well as setting the standard against
which Larry Young and others would develop. But he settled into
a groove which sustained him at Verve, later at Milestone, and
on to the day he died. Nothing new here, most songs are live
remakes of earlier hits, some even with Stanley Turrentine and
Kenny Burrell.
B+(*)

Joe Henderson: Milestone Profiles (1967-75
[2006], Milestone): One of the all-time great tenor sax soloists,
Henderson is famed for his early Blue Notes and his big comeback
on Verve in the '90s, but he wasn't marking time in between. His
Milestone records may have been inconsistent -- haven't checked
the 8-CD box, but surely it's de trop -- but he's in top form
on this wide-ranging selection.
A-

Thelonious Monk With John Coltrane: The Complete 1957 Riverside
Recordings (1957 [2006], Riverside, 2CD):
The recently discovered 1957 Monk with Coltrane At Carnegie Hall
(Blue Note) swept nearly all jazz critics lists of 2005's best records.
Previously known recordings of the two together were limited to a cruddy
Live at the Five Spot tape (released by Blue Note) and parts of
three studio albums on Riverside. This reshuffles the Riversides to
cash in on the interest, weeding out cuts without Coltrane, adding false
starts and a beside-the-point Gigi Gryce blues with Coltrane, sprucing
up the documentation. Whether this is a good idea may depend on your
level of interest. The June 25-26 septet sessions appear on Monk's
Music, an indispensible item in Monk's catalog -- more impressive
as was than split up over two discs here, larded with less essential
music. Most of the extra previously appeared well after the fact as
Thelonious Monk With John Coltrane, while the trio version of
"Monk's Mood" previously ended the otherwise solo Monk Himself.
I'm ambivalent myself, but it's hard to dock the music.
A-

Re-Bop: The Savoy Remixes (1945-59 [2006], Savoy
Jazz): Seems like every major jazz catalog company has set up deals
with DJs to reprocess their wares -- I guess Fantasy (err, Concord)
is the holdout, but they packaged all the old soul jazz they could
find as The Roots of Acid Jazz, so I wouldn't bet against
they following this trend. Whether this works or not depends more
on the DJs than on the venerable master sources, and any time you
mix a dozen of each you're likely to get hits and misses. (Which
contrasts to matching Jazzanova with the Mizell Brothers, pretty
much guaranteed to miss all the time.) The simplest approach here
is to take a sample -- a bit of Dizzy Gillespie trumpet or Milt
Jackson vibes -- and rep it until you can dance to it. Slightly
more complicated is gussying up Sarah Vaughan's "Lover Man" or
rewiring Charlie Parker's "Koko." Still, what's preserved from the
jazz is incidental: my favorite here is Boots Riley's cartoonish
remix of "Shaw 'Nuff," even though it leaves out one of Parker's
all-time great solos.
B+(**)

Re-Bop: The Savoy Originals (1945-59 [2006],
Savoy Jazz): Existing only for neophytes to map the remixes back,
these songs were selected for their parts, which makes them an
exceptionally arbitrary label sampler -- how else do you explain
two cuts from a Curtis Fuller album, or three cuts with mallets?
Still, the selections can surprise, as when Herbie Mann turns out
to be Phil Woods, or when Dizzy Gillespie gives way to Stuff Smith.
B

And these are final grades/notes on records I put back for further
listening the first time around.

Maurice Hines: To Nat "King" Cole With Love (2005
[2006], Arbors): Gregory's big brother comes close enough to the mark
to beg the question, why pick this over originals that still sound
as great as ever. Hines is a smooth, agile singer, but can't touch
Cole's voice. But the band consistently spans Cole's career, with
more muscle than the Trio and none of the dross of Cole's orchestras.
And the songs live on: Cole was the hippest of the pre-rock pop stars,
by a margin that has only grown since.
A-

Harry Miller's Isipingo: Which Way Now (1975 [2006],
Cuneiform): A sextet, half South African exiles including the
leader-bassist, half English avant-gardists, with neither half playing
to type on this 75-minute Radio Bremen air shot. Rather, they play
like a more mainstream jazz band, but uncommonly full of fire and
spirit as they stretch out on four long tracks. Trombinist Nick Evans
is especially noteworthy: he comes first in the alphabetical credits,
but earns top billing throughout, frequently battling number two man,
trumpeter Mongezi Feza. Keith Tippett's piano also gets a good hearing.
But most of the interest here will be focused on Miller and Feza --
both died tragically young, leaving only a few intriguing recordings.
This is a significant discovery for both.
A-

Murder at Qana

The Israeli government admits that they made a mistake today, in
that they bombed a building in Qana, Lebanon, killing sixty-some
people, many children, who had taken shelter in that building. I'm
not aware of them explaining just what the mistake was there. They
had, after all, already killed ten times that many people in Lebanon,
a country they were supposedly trying to pressure into turning on
itself, so it's hard to believe that the number of dead bothered
them greatly. After all, Israeli Chief of Staff Dan Halutz had
warned them: "Nothing is safe [in Lebanon], as simple as that."
Maybe the mistake was that this particular incident of mass murder
occurred in a small Lebanese town, Qana, that had suffered another
incident of mass murder during Israel's Grapes of Wrath operation
in 1996. When lightning strikes the same spot twice, it sticks in
your mind. Or maybe the mistake is that this incident seems like
the straw that breaks the camel's back, finally spurring critical
people to seeing through Israel's propaganda nonsense. One piece
of collateral damage was that Rice's anti-ceasefire diplomatic
mission was suddently unwelcome in Beirut.

For anyone who's been paying attention lately, Israel has been
making a lot of mistakes. In fact, Israel has a very long history
of making mistakes. But the curious thing is that when most of us
make mistakes, we try to recognize some fault that he made, and
we express some remorse for what our actions or inactions caused.
We also make some effort to prevent such mistakes from happening
again, and often others in our society make their own efforts.
Some such mistakes are even punished by stripping privileges,
like driving or owning guns, or even by incarceration. Yet when
Israel admits a mistake, that seems to end the issue, at least
as far as Israelis are concerned. Admitting a mistake has become
a sort of "get out of jail free" card. Sure, sometimes it isn't
quite free -- sometimes they have to run an investigation, but
that's rarely more than a ruse to wait until the outrage calms
down, or moves on to another mistake. This lack of consequences
helps explain why Israelis keep making the same mistakes over
and over again. They never learn, because there's no one with
the legal authority to discipline them, or the moral authority
to teach them.

There was a day when the US government would at least recognize
the occasional Israeli mistake, and therefore provide some check
against repetition, even though over time the US proved to be a
remarkably forgiving father figure. But that was before the Bush
regime took power and gave Israel the green light to pursue its own
vision of moral clarity. The result of that license is that now,
when Israel commits an atrocity like Qana, the US automatically
shares a substantial share of the blame. How much is still hard
to tell. We know, for instance, that Israel had detailed plans for
attacking Hezbollah long before the latter group offered them an
excuse to implement them. We don't know, however, to what extent
those plans were shared with, vetted and approved by the US. We
do know that the US is at least as intimately involved in Israel's
operation as Iran and/or Syria are with Hezbollah -- that much is
established merely by the flow of weapons and cash. We also know
that the US NSA provides signals intelligence to Israel -- that
is discussed at some length in the Suskind book. We've seen that
Israel has what looks like satellite imagery of Lebanon -- helps
them with targeting precision -- which would also come from the
US. And clearly there has been extensive collaboration on the
anti-diplomatic front. But what about the war plans?

I've come to suspect that expanding the War on Terrorism into
Lebanon was actively encouraged by Bush, Cheney, or whoever calls
the shots on this. The conventional wisdom has long been that
Israel was useless in the War on Terror because an active Israel
alliance would be poison on the Arab "hearts and minds" front.
However, it's easy to imagine someone saying, what's the point
of having this superb military ally right in the region if we
can't use them to help our cause? Given the situation in Iraq,
the US has worse problems than hypothetical "hearts and minds":
open a second (actually, more like third and fourth) front and
maybe some of the jihadis will flock elsewhere, taking pressure
off Baghdad. Expanding the war effectively gives the US a quick
injection of manpower and firepower. Also puts Syria and Iran on
edge, hopefully on their best behavior, making the consequences
of offending us all the more palpable.

That this now looks like a superdumb losing strategy doesn't
prove that it wasn't pushed before the fact. The neocons have
been so optimistic before -- even if the US military disappointed
them, their admiration for Israel is, or was, untarnished. More
points can be established to support this thesis, starting with
the inclusion of Hamas and Hezbollah on the terrorism list, and
including the diplomatic pressure that drove Syria out of the
country, leaving Lebanon relatively defenseless -- or so they
thought. Maybe that's the real mistake, and the murder at Qana
is just a cover-up for public consumption. Nobody's going to pay
for that, anyway.

Suskind Again

Before we were so rudely interrupted, I read and was going to comment
on Ron Suskind's The One Percent Solution. This book is an
account of the War on Terror, from a quasi-insider perspective,
where the insider view closely resembles that of George Tenet at
the CIA. A reviewer at the New York Times called the book a
"quarter Woodward" -- meaning an insider account like those Bob
Woodward does, but with far fewer sources. The similarity may be
true, but it also means far fewer deals and compromises with his
sources. Suskind certainly makes an effort at rehabilitating Tenet,
stressing his interpersonal talents and work ethic, but he's not
interested in apologia so much as getting to what happened, and
what went wrong.

I've quoted what for me were the most revealing quotes in the book in a
post
already: Bush's Israel policy -- "We're going to tilt back toward Israel" --
and encouraging words for Ariel Sharon, Bush's belief that, "Sometimes a
show of force by one side can really clarify things." We've seen just how
that policy and those words have played out in the last few weeks. It's
useful to be able to link them back to Bush's pre-crisis outburst.

The rest of this post will be more sections I marked while reading
the book. The first is on the genesis and scope of the War on Terror
(p. 19):

Washington, day by day, had already become the bustling capital of
a twilight struggle -- the so-called "war on terror," a term that was
settling unevenly into the global vernacular. Close facsimiles had
been floated for a week or so after the attacks and before President
Bush used it, just so, in his landmark speech of September 20, 2001,
declaring before a joint session of Congress that "Our 'war on terror'
begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until
every terrorist group of global reach had been found, stopped and
defeated."

Since the list of terrorist groups soon came to include Hamas and
Hezbollah, this suggests that the plan to vanquish Israel's enemies
was part of Bush's program from the very start. The first heady days
of Israel's pounding of Hezbollah may have looked like the belated
opening of another major front of the War on Terror, to go with the
much touted "central front" in Iraq. But in doing so, the War on
Terror became a joint US-Israeli production, with the US picking up
all of Israel's liabilities in the bargain. Given how Iraq has gone,
the Bush braintrust may have figured that Israel is the only route
forward. Not limiting the scope at the start opened the door for
Iraq, for Palestine, for Lebanon, for Syria, for Iran, for the
neocon's whole shopping list. It also ensured the tragic failure
of endless war. Of course, that was part of the point -- they just
thought they'd do better at it, in large part because they viewed
Israel's ability to stretch their wars out from 1947 or 1937 to the
present as a measure of success.

I marked the part where Suskind quotes Bush from the "axis of
evil" speech (pp. 80-81):

"Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to
support terror. The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax, and
nerve gas, and nuclear weapons for over a decade. This is a regime
that has already used poison gas to murder thousands of its own
citizens -- leaving the bodies of mothers huddled over their dead
children. This is a regime that agreed to international inspections --
then kicked out the inspectors. This is a regime that has something to
hide from the civilized world.

"States like these and their terrorist allies," he went on,
"constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the
world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a
grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists,
giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack our
allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of these
cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophe."

[ . . . ]

And then the President offered something beyond Cheney's portfolio,
something more personal than the sweeping ideologies. In an
evidence-free realm, he would draw his certainty from the deep well of
faith. This was all him:

"Those of us who have lived through these challenging times have
been changed by them. We've come to know truths that we will never
question: evil is real, and it must be opposed." The crowd
erupted.

This gives the speech a church revival air, with the applause
at the end erupting as spontaneous self-congratulation for taking
such a staunch stand against sin. But the effect is that Bush
deliberately tied his hands to avoid any temptation to shortchange
the good fight. Concentrating on the enemy's evilness left whatever
we might have done unexamined and irrelevant. But revivals are far
more impressive to those who participate than to outsiders, who
easily see through the chest-thumping. Like so many accomplishments
of the Bush reign, this one was a chimerical victory of rhetoric
over reality.

One merit of the Suskind book is that it marches us back through
events with a little added information, albeit with a CIA slant. On
Afghanistan (pp. 96-99):

Similarly, what had happened at Tora Bora -- how the CIA's advice
was ignored, and how both the civilian and the uniformed leadership of
the U.S. military had miscalculated badly, allowing bin Laden to
escape -- was indisputable for anyone with involvement and the right
security clearance.

On April 17, The Washington Post printed the first,
preliminary report suggesting how the U.S. Army had failed to surround
the Tora Bora caves and that such a move might have prevented bin
Laden from escaping. That day, at a press conference, Donald Rumsfeld
disputed that assertion, saying he did not "know today of any
evidence" that bin Laden "was in Tora Bora at the time, or that he
left Tora Bora at the time, or even where he is today."

That was also false. [ . . . ] In the wide, diffuse "war on
terror," so much of it occurring in the shadows -- with no
transparency and only perfunctory oversight -- the administration
could say anything it wanted to say. That was a blazing insight of
this period. The administration could create whatever reality was
convenient.

Reality construction has been a major concern of the Bush cabal
from the beginning, so this is just one example. On to Iraq (p. 123):

The primary impetus for invading Iraq, according to those attending
NSC briefings on the Gulf in this period, was to make an example of
Hussein, to create a demonstration model to guide the behavior of
anyone with the temerity to acquire destructive weapons or, in any
way, flout the authority of the United States.

In Oval Office meetings, the President would often call Iraq a
"game changer." More specifically, the theory was that the United
States -- with a forceful action against Hussein -- would change the
rules of geopolitical analysis and action for countless other
countries.

Again, the belief that force would clarify things. Bush shaped
both policy and information in peculiar ways, as evidenced by this
quote about CIA executive briefings (p. 182):

Briefing Bush each morning in gory detail -- enabling him to "go
operational" -- was now part of CIA procedure. Tenet brought a variety
of briefers; some Bush seemed to respond to more than others. Most
presidents, in their morning intelligence briefings, sit with
analysts. The details of an operation are described, then the analyst
works through the architecture of what it means to a state, a region,
U.S. strategy, and Bush certainly saw plenty of analysts. But he likes
operators, the people, virtually all men, involved in the struggle,
the face-to-face and hand-to-hand.

Briefers, all the way to principals and department heads, feel
bush's itch, his impatience, and pick up his cadence. They all start
talking like operators, no matter what's being reported. These are men
who, on balance, never experienced the bracing effects -- humbling,
uplifting, oddly settling -- of military action. The few who have,
like Powell, and his deputy Rich Armitage, smooth over these
disparities -- piquant at a time of war -- by joining in the tough
talk that they know, from experience, is hollow at its core.

Bonhomie swirls, led by the chief, animating the room and, in some
cases, the action that flows from it.

There are many stories in the book about instances where Bush
presses for operational details on various suspects or threats or,
mostly, unsubstantiated rumors. His preference for action over
analysis is singular. But one thing he never asks is why someone
would engage in terror or, for that matter, opposition to the US.
That question was answered a priori, by faith. Again on Iraq, but
really on the underlying precepts (pp. 214-215):

America was, in sum, ready to act, with hard evidence or not, to
thwart any possible challenge. Thus, the job of every country, just to
be safe, is to avoid at all costs even an implication that it is not
aligned with the interests of the United States. Saddam, felt by
Wolfowitz, Feith, and company to be an easy mark, was simply a
demonstration model to show the new resolve of the United States and
its postmodern rules of international behavior. That's the way you
change behavior. The way you do it, any behavioral scientist will tell
you, is to enforce the desird behavior, over and over, no matter what
the subject does. Then the desired behavior becomes ingrained,
reflexive, impulse.

This is the way you buy time in a futile struggle -- whether
stopping the unstoppable spread of destructive weapons or keeping
terrorists, with or without state sponsors, off our shores. You can't
fight them all. You have to change the way everyone thinks,
everywhere.

And the way you do that is through action -- continuous, forceful,
unrelenting. That's the "game changer," and where George W. Bush's
character fits so neatly with this global experiment in
behaviorism.

You need a certain type of leader to run this protocol.

One thing that Suskind is relatively sharp at is in drawing out the
connections between Bush's personality and policy. The book has many
stories about people identified as terrorists and captured or missed.
One was Yusef al-Ayeri, a Saudi known as "Swift Sword" (p. 235):

First, it was discovered that this al-Ayeri was behind a Web site,
al-Nida, that U.S. investigators had long felt carried some of the
most specialized analysis and coded directives about al Qaeda's
motives and plans. He was also the anonymous author of two
extraordinary pieces of writing -- short books, really, that had
recently moved through cyberspace, about al Qaeda's underlying
strategies. The Future of Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula After the
Fall of Baghdad, written as the United States prepared its attack,
said that an American invasion of Iraq would be the best possible
outcome for al Qaeda, stoking extremism throughout the Persian Gulf
and South Asia, and achieving precisely the radicalizing quagmire that
bin Laden had hoped would occur in Afghanistan. A second book,
Crusaders' War, outlined a tactical model for fighting the
American forces in Iraq, including "assassination and poisoning the
enemy's food and drink," remotely triggered explosives, suicide
bombings, and lightning strike ambushes. It was the playbook.

Of course, we don't need to take al Qaeda's word that the Iraq
war played right into their hands. One question no one has addressed
so far is who, if anyone, in the US government made an effort to
seriously raise the question. Given that CIA al Qaeda experts like
Michael Scheuer have opposed the Iraq war, you'd think that they'd
take the lead, but their usual critique stops with misdirection of
resources. But then they were as committed to violence against their
targets as Cheney and Rumsfeld were against Iraq. As far as I know,
only antiwar leftists raised the issue.

Suskind quotes Rumsfeld's Oct. 16, 2003 memo with questions about
how to measure success in the Global War on Terrorism. Two that strike
me as particularly interesting are: "How do we stop those who are
financing the radical madrassa schools?"; and "Should we create a
private foundation to entice radical madrasses to a more moderate
course?" Such abiding faith in the power of propaganda to manipulate
people, and so little interest in addressing any real issues that
may be bothering people, and that would continue to bother people
even after massive investments in propaganda! Suskind comments
(pp. 276-277):

Yet the most stirring passage -- to know if we are winning or
losing the global "war on terror." Are we capturing, killing or
deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas
and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against
us? -- is a wily Rumsfeldian response to the President's "bring
them on" and "rather fight them there than here."

Those statements assumed a kind of quantitative yardstick,
much like the one Lyndon Johnson embraced in the early days of the
Vietnam conflict, that the enemy is static, measurable, readily
identifiable. Kill them off, and you're done.

Rumsfeld's use of "dissuading" -- a favorite term in his memos from
the earliest days of the administration -- turns "progress,"
appropriately, into an active term, a moving target.

And, by the fall of 2003, there had clearly been movement in an
unintended, and undesirable, direction. One hundred fifty thousand
U.S. troops in the center of the Arab world was a jihadist recruiting
tool of almost unfathomable magnetism. Terrorist recruitment was on
the rise, visibly and markedly, across the Arab world. CIA reports
indicated that the madrassas in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Iran were
overflowing, as were contributions to radical clerics and their
operations. Images flashed to millions each day by Al Jazeera of
U.S. tanks in Baghdad and Tikrit, and the carnage that was now Iraq,
were dissuading young Arab men -- in Iraq and across the Gulf -- from
standing on the sidelines. They were joining the global fight against
the "crusader" Bush and his infidel army as the cause of their
generation. Was our situation, in fact, one, as Rumsfeld queried, in
which "the harder we work, the behinder we get?" No question mark
needed there, either.

An unhistorical irony may be that after all the search and straddle
to find common purpose between two grand initiatives -- the find
them, stop them struggle and the overthrow of Hussein -- there
was, finally, a connection between Iraq and the broader "war on
terror." It was a catalytic relationship, like gasoline on a fire.

Well, "catalytic" wasn't the right word, and Suskind as well as
Rumsfeld is hung up on those madrassas -- they're basically the
equivalent of Christian home schooling over here, where the big
problem isn't the bad stuff they teach but the ignorance they don't
seek to overcome. But the memo does indicate that even Rumsfeld is
beginning to there's something more going on beyond his precepts.
Another interesting quote, following the Madrid bombings (p. 303):

And there was more. Inside the analytical shops at CIA, and NSC,
the Madrid bombings and swift follow-up investigation flowed neatly
into another growing consensus -- a conclusion that was the last thing
anyone in the White House wanted publicized: al Qaeda might not, at
this point, actually want to attack America.

Of course, this wasn't publicized (pp. 304-305):

In any event, myriad key facts, such as al Qaeda's status and real
strategy, would remain submerged in the spring of 2004. A
justification for this secrecy -- and, at this point, the shadow cast
over a continent of actions and rationales in the conduct of the "war
on terror" -- was a hard, tactical extract from the cult of
message-discipline: that to let al Qaeda know certain things we knew,
including that we knew that they might not actually have a
desire to attack the U.S. mainland, would be valuable in helping them
plot their strategies. And, because al Qaeda, its supporters,
imitators, and adherents, are members of a vast, nonvoting global
constituency that the U.S. President had now assumed, no one could
know.

That meant that the dictates of "information warfare" that apply to
an enemy in combat would also apply on the U.S. mainland, even though
it was now democracy's quadrennial opportunity for citizens toassess
the conduct of their leaders. The American public had no more right to
know the government's intentions than a mid-rung al Qaeda lieutenant.
If all that happened to benefit those in power, so be it.

And far be it from someone like Kerry to question this and risk
breaching national security, opening America up to another 9/11
attack. Also unpublicized was the CIA's analysis of how bin Laden's
pre-election message served Bush's interests -- a story that has
been widely quoted from the book.

The book winds down with a few pages on the post-Tenet CIA and
Porter Goss (pp. 334-335):

Goss's people, called "the Gosslings," were running loyalty
tests. Goss made clear to top brass what he would later write in an
all-agency memo: that CIA is there to support the policies of the
administration. Period.

[ . . . ]

In fact, almost all of the dozen or so people at this meeting --
even those most valuable operational bosses who'd built
eyeball-to-eyeball relationships with reluctant friends around the
world -- would soon be gone, and the people who'd replaced them as
well. The agency's role, like that of much of government, would now be
to serve and support policy rather than to help create it.

I reading this book I have to admit that sometimes I found what
the CIA was doing to be reasonable and useful, even though most of
the effort ranged from wasted to counterproductive. But the core
problem at CIA and everywhere else was, and still is, the notion
that you can fix the problem of terrorism by some combination of
intelligence gathering, force, and propaganda, without ever having
to consider, let alone change, any of the behavior that inspired
terrorists in the first place. That falls back to first assumptions
not just of Bush but the whole right wing in America.

Overstated Case

Another good letter appeared in the Wichita Eagle a couple of days
ago. The writer is Dick Williams, of Wichita -- don't know him. The
title is "Overstated case":

In situations as complex as the present Middle East, it is not
helpful to vilify one side and unduly praise another. Because the
present destruction of Lebanon and Gaza is so horrific and one-sided,
supporters of Israel are tempted to overstate their case, whereas
Palestinians have let the scenes of destruction speak for
themselves.

Advocates for Israel have been especially active recently. We are
told that Israel "sacrificed for peace" by withdrawing from places
where the United Nations said it should never have been. We are told
about the capture of Israeli soldiers without mentioning Israel's
routine capture and assassination of Hamas officials.

What is needed are cooler heads and less dependence on unilateral
force. Both sides should consider that violence is ineffectual. Above
all, we should recognize that no government, including our own, has a
God-given right to exist. We all must justify our existence by our
behavior.

This may be the most sensible thing I've read in the last 2-3
weeks. It certainly cuts right through the cant Bush, Blair and
Rice have been spouting about not wanting a ceasefire because it
might be broken some time in the future.

Some Reading

Some reading on Israel that I've found useful:

Tanya
Reinhart: Israel's New Middle East. Reviews the events, then
argues that Israel's secret desire is Ben Gurion's original vision
of "natural borders" on rivers -- the Jordan in the east, the Litani
in the north. Key quote: "But in Israel's military vision, in the
next round, the land should first be 'cleaned' of its residents, as
Israel did when it occupied the Syrian Golan Heights in 1967, and
as it is doing now in southern Lebanon." See also her July 14-17
post:
What Are They Fighting For?

Sharat G.
Lin: Chronology of the Latest Crisis in the Middle East. Just one
entry pre-2006, but maps out Israel's pressure from Jan. 25, 2006 on,
up to July 24, then makes ten observations.

Jonathan
Cook: Five Myths That Sanction Israel's War Crimes. More myths and
fallacies.

Tony
Karon: Condi in Diplomatic Disneyland. I've already written about Karon's
Six Fallacies post, some of which is recobbled here, as well
as more recent developments on the so-called diplomatic front.

Chris
Hedges: Israel's Barrier to Peace. About the wall and the attitude
it projects. Also see his July 14
article,
Mutually Assured Destruction in the Middle East.

Yoav Gelber:
Lebanon: How We Got Here. Brief history of Israeli relations with
Lebanon, most useful for 1948-82 period, scanty on the 1982-85 phase
of the war, and thin thereafter.

There's probably a lot more to cite: Billmon's been particularly
sharp on this, Juan Cole less so but still useful and still mostly
tied down with Iraq, while Helena Cobban -- as knowledgeable as
anyone on Lebanon -- is off in Uganda. Looked at some others --
quite a bit at Counterpunch, including Uri Avnery and Robert Fisk;
War in Context; Abu Aardvark.

One old fact that struck me here was that the excuse for the
1982 war was the attempted assassination of Israel's ambassador
to Great Britain. Clearly, the relationship there of stimulus to
response was completely arbitrary: it could have been anything,
and it was bound to be something. In some ways this wasn't as
big a stretch as in 1982, but clearly Israel was spoiling for
a fight, and leapt at the opportunity. One thing that we don't
know is to what extent this contingency had been discussed with
the Bush regime. Clearly, the decision to launch the attack on
Lebanon was made so hastily that the Washington bureaucracy --
e.g., the State Department -- couldn't have been in that loop,
although some point-person at the top could have signed off and
lined up support. The US never blinked on this war, and the US
has stood so staunchly by Israel's side all along that nobody
thinks this isn't America's war as much as Israel's. The whole
Rice diplomacy charade, along with the rush to resupply Israel,
could hardly be more blatant. I wonder how long it's going to
be before the world's leaders, including 6/8 of the G8, get over
their initial shock and start actually working to undercut and
marginalize Bush.

Now It All Comes Clear

Billmon has a post
called "War by Tantrum" that cites two quotes I want to comment on. The
first is from the Jerusalem Post:

A high-ranking IAF officer caused a storm on Monday in an
off-record briefing during which he told reporters that IDF Chief of
Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz had ordered the military to destroy 10
buildings in Beirut in retaliation to every Katyusha rocket strike on
Haifa.

As Billmon notes, the Romans had rules like that. As he doesn't
note, so did the Nazis. All three reflect blind faith in absolute
violence, the belief that any problem can be solved by beating it
to death. There are lots of problems with this. It shows the world
that you have no scruples, but perhaps more importantly it shows
that you don't know who your enemy is, so you're blindly flailing.
The result is that you almost never actually hit anything that might
do you some good, even if the theory worked, which mostly it doesn't.
For example, in 2001-02, Israel blamed all suicide bombers on Yassir
Arafat. Hamas would blow something up, so Israel would take it out
on Arafat. That hardly discouraged Hamas, at least until they saw
that every time Israel kicked Arafat his popularity went up.

We keep reading about behaviorism -- the idea that you can train
a dog or a child to behave by hitting him when he misbehaves. Well,
sometimes that works, but sometimes it just makes him scared or
skittish or plain mean, and sometimes if he's big and clever enough
he'll learn to hit you back, maybe even when you're not looking.
But it never works if all you do is hit someone else. And the fact
that you can't tell the difference or don't care isn't something
he's going to compensate for.

Second quote comes from Ha'aretz:

Bush and the public assumed that the army knew what it was doing,
and that Israel, with its superiority in manpower, weaponry and
technology, would be able to put an end to Hezbollah as a menace to
Israel. Little by little, however, a worrying picture has begun to
emerge: Instead of an army that is small but smart, we are catching
glimpses of an army that is big, rich and dumb.

This quote followed a discussion of military tactics which breaks
down to who's more willing to risk their lives to achieve their goals --
or, as Billmon puts it, "whether a more affluent, less mobilized Israeli
society can still absorb the kind of punishment required to slug it out
on the ground with Hezbollah." The irony in all this is that the neocons
got snookered worse than anyone in thinking of Israel as the model the
American military should aspire to. The fact is that Israel hasn't had
anything resembling a clean military victory since 1967. The War of
Attrition with Egypt was exactly that. 1973 was a draw perceived as
a psychological defeat. Lebanon was a bloody, pointless mess from the
very start, dragged out to 18 years only to give Hezbollah training.
The counter-intifadas were like trying to fight roaches by pummelling
them with garbage.

To be fair, America hasn't done any better, unless you're still
excited by Grenada. Korea was a draw. Vietnam was a flat-out loss.
The Cuba invasion never got off the beach. Panama was good for one
kidnapping then a hasty retreat. Kuwait left Iraq as an open sore,
then you know what happened when they opened that one up again.
Afghanistan is a slow burn. The War on Terrorism has left its Most
Wanteds at large. The War on Drugs hasn't made a dent. The War on
Poverty was quietly abandoned, at least until Bush revised the
semantics. The last winner we had was WWII, and that was won by
manufacturing, logistics and engineering -- as Billmon points out,
not by the will to fight, which the Germans and Russians were far
more effective at mustering.

The neocons, both American and Israeli, don't understand a lot
of things, but at the top of their list is that, while we like
everyone else will fight for our homes, we don't really want to
go somewhere else and fight to take or crush someone else's homes,
especially when they're willing to fight back, and we might get
killed or maimed. The only way the US can staff its military is
by promising folks that their tours will be virtually riskless --
which thanks to the neocons is getting tougher and tougher, and it
shows. Israel still has universal military draft -- well, nearly
universal, except for the Arabs they don't trust and the ultra
orthodox who get a pass -- but even they are so used to riskless
conflict that the real thing is shocking. The fact is, very few
people these days want anything to do with war. The destruction
is extraordinary and mutual, the chances of gain are negligible.
Why do these war mongers even exist?

Heard a quote attributed to Hezbollah today that said that they
hadn't realized that their little kidnapping caper would elicit the
massive reaction that it has. Think about what that quote means:
First of all, it means that even Hezbollah underestimated Israel's
inhumanity.

I'm afraid that I've underestimated Israel as well. It's been
clear for some time now that their lunatic fringe has started to
flirt with the idea of genocide. But Israel's plan to create a
security zone in southern Lebanon begins to look like the real
thing. They've dropped leaflets warning the people who live there
to leave. Given the terror bombing and the cutoff of supplies
most of those people have indeed become refugees. Israel has
further decided that anyone who doesn't heed their warning is
ipso facto a Hezbollah terrorist -- such people are deemed valid
targets, to be killed during the invasion. The goal, in other
words, is to totally clear south Lebanon of its people. To keep
them from returning, everything will be destroyed, rendering the
land as uninhabitable as possible. Systemmatically clearing a
land and eradicating its population: maybe that's not the exact
definition of genocide, but it's morally equivalent.

At least, this is what Israel has started to do, and it's what
Israel insists is its plan and desire for south Lebanon. Whether
it happens or not depends on several factors: how much time the
Bush cabal can buy with Rice's diplomatic charade, directed at
everyone but the cause of this crisis; how long and how fiercely
Hezbollah manages to hold out; how much stomach Israel really has
for continuing their war crimes. What Israel is doing is hard to
grasp because it is so vile and so stupid. Even if Israel at first
looks successful, Hezbollah will infiltrate back into the area,
because that's their home. And they will bring their weapons and
their memories, including the lessons Israel teaches them: that
borders are meaningless, that nothing matters but force.

It's very rare in one's life when you witness an event and know
that it changes everything. I didn't recognize that moment on 9/11
because I didn't realize how utterly deranged the US response would
be: and not just the Bush response; he had plenty of help, but his
blind, stupid rage amplified America's basest emotions when what was
urgently needed was a sanity check. But Israel's senseless destruction
of Lebanon is clearly just such a turning point. These are the images
that will forever be associated with the Jewish State, and that will
forever condemn it among the rogues of history. I always thought that
a sensible accommodation between Israel and its Arab neighbors and
residents could be easily achieved with just a little good will. But
all that's been put behind us now. I blame Bush, who based his Israel
policy on the idiotic notion that, "Sometimes a show of force by one
side can really clarify things." It sure has.

Israel's Choke Hold

The Wichita Eagle published a letter by Laura Tillem today, under
the title "Israel's choke hold is unrelenting":

Recent letter writers have claimed that Israel ended its occupation
of Gaza. But all Israel did was pull its settlers out, which cut
maintenance and security costs while making it easy to punish
Palestinians with all-night-long sonic booms. Isreal kept the borders
sealed, maintaining a choke hold on Gaza's economy. Hamas had only won
its elections after an 18-month unilateral ceasefire. If Israel had
any interest in peace, it could have welcomed Hamas' embrace of
nonviolence. Instead, it shut off civil and huminatarian aid to the
democratically elected Palestinian Authority and shelled Gaza. As an
American and a Jew, I must speak out against this unjust policy and
demand our government stop supporting it.

We had a demonstration against the war here in Wichita Saturday
evening. Had at least 100 people marching, counting a few small kids,
a couple in strollers.

The Fallacies Behind the Misdeeds

Tony Karon's
post
on "Six Fallacies of the U.S. Hizballah Campaign" is well worth reading.
His six fallacies are:

Hizballah can be militarily eliminated: Israel failed
in 18 years of occupying Lebanon to defeat Hizballah, which was
built specifically to fight Israel. Even if Israel is uncommonly
successful at decimating Hizballah's leadership, they will create
further resistance. Unless Israel keeps the fight up forever, any
truce will look like a defeat for Israel because the resistance
will continue.

If Lebanon is made to pay a heavy price, it will turn on
Hizballah: "It's Bin Laden logic, after all, echoing the idea
that if al-Qaeda blows up enough stuff on the American mainland,
it can force the U.S. to withdraw from the Middle East and stop
backing Israel." Nobody likes submitting to the will of some other
country bombing you.

The crisis offers an opportunity for the U.S. to rally Arab
support against Hizballah and Iran: Starts with White House
official quote on Rice's mission: "She's not going to come home
with a ceasefire but stronger ties to the Arab world."

Syrian cooperation can be acquired cost-free: Problem
here is that everyone knows that if Assad falls in Syria, the
result will be a Muslim Brotherhood takeover, which will be far
worse for the U.S. and Israel ("the Israelis are explicit about
this"). So Syria can hold out for what it wants, which is the
Golan Heights back. "Syria's relationship with Hizballah was
premised on the fact that it had no military capacity to put
pressure on Israel directly, and it saw in the Lebanese militia
a form of proxy leverage to press Israel for the return of Syrian
territory captured in 1967."

The Middle East's crises can be addressed in piecemeal
fashion: He doesn't put it this succinctly, but all the
problems come back to Israel's unwillingness to settle with the
Palestinians: "Sure, the Arab regimes have plenty of problems
with Hizballah, but they can't get behind the U.S. until a peace
process that will get Israel back to some version of its '67
borders is underway, and other vital interests are addressed
and engaged."

Israeli interests are U.S. interests: "The U.S. has a
principle alliance with Israel, but it also has an interest in
stability in the Middle East, for reasons of oil and security,
on a basis of a Pax Americana. That has long been the lodestar
of U.S. policy, balancing Israeli interests with those of its
Arab clients. . . . But Israel doesn't necessarily need stability,
democracy and prosperity in the Arab world. The 'iron wall' doctrine
of state building of Vladimir Jabotinsky, ideological icon of Ariel
Sharon, is that Israel's survival depends on crushing and humiliating
its Arab neighbors."

Before getting to the fallacies, Karon addresses the question
of whether Iran is driving the conflict. He argues no, for reasons
I've already gone into plus a few more. He also quotes Mark Perry
("a U.S. analyst involved in ongoing talks with Hizballah") on how
this all started:

Hezbollah and Israel stand along this border every day observing
each other through binoculars and waiting for an opportunity to kill
each other. They are at war. They have been for 25 years, no one ever
declared a cease-fire between them. . . . They stand on the border
every day and just wait for an opportunity. And on Tuesday morning
there were two Humvees full of Israeli soldiers, not under observation
from the Israeli side, not under covering fire, sitting out there all
alone. The Hezbollah militia commander just couldn't believe it -- so
he went and got them.

The Israeli captain in charge of that unit knew he had really
screwed up, so he sent an armored personnel carrier to go get them in
hot pursuit, and Hezbollah led them right through a minefield.

This is a perfectly plausible story. Once this small incident
broke, everything else raced up the chain of command. Israel had
just responded massively to a similar incident in Gaza, and had
long planned for the same in Lebanon, so their instinct was to
respond exactly the same way -- except that in attacking a much
more heavily armed Hizballah they quickly bit off a much larger
war. Still, the circumstances that let the incident blow up were
largely constructed by Israel -- in particular, the "iron wall"
doctrine, which arguably worked to bring stability against the
independent Arab states, but drops the threshhold for violence
so low that non-state actors can easily trip it.

On the other hand, Hizballah -- still following Karon's spelling
here, at least the third different one I've used in the last week;
so sorry about that -- amassed its weapons cache as a deterrent. A
sensible Israeli government would have been deterred, lest they just
encourage a further arms race, but another facet of the "iron wall"
doctrine is that Israel cannot be deterred -- Israel must be fearless
in crushing its opponents, otherwise it will be vulnerable to them.
Hard to say whether the psychology of the Holocaust feeds into this --
the idea that the world would do anything just to kill Jews -- or is
merely a convenient cloak for plain old fashioned bullying.

It's worth noting that Hizballah didn't use its missile arsenal
on Israel until Israel started bombing Lebanon. Of course, once the
bombing started, Hizballah had no choice -- at least under the logic
of deterrence -- except to return fire. Otherwise, Israel will never
show them any respect. The only fault in this logic is that Israel
didn't fear Hizballah enough to hold back. Rather, they plunged in
whole hog, inviting Hizballah to hit them with everything they had.
If both sides respected each other's power, this war would not have
happened. But when one side thinks it's too powerful to be deterred
by the other, that creates an unstable situation where any small
incident can escalate to war. In the case of Gaza, Israel never had
much to fear -- in large part that's why that story has disappeared.
But with Lebanon, Israel is finally getting a taste of its own
medicine. In such a situation it's cold comfort to know that you're
inflicting more damage than you're sustaining -- any damage at all
argues that Israel's political leaders have failed in their promise
to protect the security of the Israeli people.

The political upshot of all this remains to be seen, but several
points should be obvious: Israel's unilateralist policies are simply
unable to cower either the Palestinians or other Arabs into submission,
and therefore are unable to provide Israel with security; Israel's
hair-trigger escalation to massive collective punishment only shows
the world how brutally racist Israel has become; Israel's political
leadership has backed into an untenable position, where reinforcing
their threats only discredits them further, with no hope of attaining
goals that when tested are unobtainable. The US is complicit in this,
not so much because of the historical alliance as because the Bush
regime has been seduced by the same dream of superpowerdom -- which,
it's worth noting, they mostly learned from Israel. Sooner or later
this should cause both regimes to fall under the dead weight of their
delusions, but as we've seen they are capable of truly dreadful things
before that happens.

It's worth emphasizing that this war is the result of bad ideas
foolishly pursued by people too enamored with their presumed great
powers. The old saw that absolute power corrupts absolutely is once
again much in evidence.

Music: Current count 12141 [12112] rated (+29), 900 [907] unrated (-7).
Again, worked all week on jazz, so have nothing to show here. The jazz
prospecting was relatively successful, and the new Jazz Consumer Guide
is nearly done. Recycled Goods time is nearly upon us as well, so I
expect to shift gears in a day or two and knock that out as well. Too
bad the world is going to hell in a handbasket at the same time as
there is so much work to do here.

Jazz Prospecting (CG #10, Part 12, aka the End)

I'm going to call this the official end of prospecting for Jazz
Consumer Guide #10. Not quite done with the draft -- 1628 words at
the moment, which is about what will ultimately run, but I still
have two critical reviews to write: the second Pick Hit, and the
all-important Dud of the Month. Once I get those written I'll have
more than will fit, so that will be that. I figure I'll be able to
get the draft to the editor by Wednesday. Indications are that it
will be edited within a week, and that it will run sometime -- no
date yet -- in August.

Update: Got the two key missing reviews in the bag, plus some
more, bringing word count to 2315, record count to 43 (20 graded,
23 additional). This still may change before I send the draft in,
and some of the above won't fit. Also updated the prospecting
file. The total number
of records prospected for this round is 244. If you follow the
blog regularly, you know about all of them. Those who only read
the Voice just get the executive summary.

Mike Stern: Who Let the Cats Out? (2006, Heads Up):
Pretty ugly cats, if you ask me. Stern's guitar is only half ugly,
which is the least he can do for what's basically a fusion album:
lots of electric bass, some gratuitous sax from Bob Franceschini,
two dishes of Roy Hargrove trumpet, two more of Gregoire Maret
harmonica, the usual keybs. Only thing that bothers me much is
Richard Bona's vocals: don't see any point, even as scat, which
is sort of the fallback position once you realize you've nothing
to say. Not sure this is worth a Dud slot, but he did get his mug
on the cover of Downbeat.
B-

John McLaughlin: Industrial Zen (2006, Verve):
I was originally scheduled to write up an entry on McLaughlin for
the Rolling Stone Guide, but it got scrubbed when we ran into a
disagreement about some early records I hadn't been able to dig
up. I did manage to get all of his Verve records, which carry on
from 1986, but in the rush I never got around to playing, much
less digesting, all of them. This one makes me wish I had those
records under my belt, but I'm not sure it's going to inspire me
to do the research. I'm also not sure they'd help much. Despite
a couple of nods to India -- specifically, two vocals by Shankar
Mahadevan that actually seem a bit out of place, and two more
cuts with Zakir Hussain on tabla -- this is a heavy-duty fusion
album, much heavier than anything I've heard him do since the
early '70s. The difference from the '70s is more programming,
and I'm not sure that that's a plus. Nor does the spot sax from
Bill Evans and Ada Rovatti, mostly soprano, help much. When he
cranks it up it sounds good but not all that interesting. That's
always been a risk with fusion.
[B]

D.D. Jackson: Serenity Song (2006, Justin Time):
The core trio here looks promising, with bassist Ugonna Okegwo and
drummer Dafnis Prieto joining the pianist. Jackson was a student
of Don Pullen, and every now and then you hear something that only
comes out of Pullen's bag -- rare and welcome sounds. But most of
the pieces have something more: Sam Newsome's soprano sax on four,
Christian Howes's violin on five, Dana Leong's trombone on one and
cello on two, with some duplicates along the way. I'm never one to
complain about trombone, but the others are mixed blessings. The
strings add little more than a glistening thickener, but the sax
takes over -- once to impressive effect, but I'm less sure about
the others.
[B+(**)]

World Saxophone Quartet: Political Blues (2006,
Justin Time): Jaleel Shaw is the fourth sax these days, but only
one cut here sticks to the original Quartet conception, and even
that one just adds a curtain of harmony to a David Murray solo.
I've never much liked Julius Hemphill's original concept even
though my admiration for the individuals (Hemphill included) is
nearly boundless. So the fact that the rest of the cuts have
bass and drums is welcome -- the springboard, I think, so some
of the most glorious honking in the three mainstay's careers.
The political themes are less incisive than I'd like -- David
Murray's line, "the Republican Party is not very nice," may be
the first understatement in his career. (He was trying to come
up with a rhyme for Rice, like "screws you twice" or "sucks
like lice" or "pulls a heist.") Oliver Lake rants on the New
Orleans smackdown. Hamiet Bluiett comes up with the sharpest
concept, "Amazin' Disgrace," but winds up short for words. One
guest who does have the words is Craig Harris, who takes his
home turf's neocons on in "Bluocracy." Blood Ulmer also sings
one, but the best he can come up with is "Mannish Boy" -- good
enough you won't mind, even if you have to wonder. Americans
hate politics, and with all due respect to Mingus, so do these
guys. But when they get their blood up, they sure can blow.
A

Adam Lane's Full Throttle Orchestra: New Musical Kingdom
(2001-04 [2006], Clean Feed): Looks like Lane's a guy worth keeping tabs
on. This is one of several groups/configurations he runs -- the only one
I've heard before is a trio with Vinny Golia, but their first record has
made my A-list, and I'm ticked off that CIMP didn't send the follow-up
as well. This particular group appears to be six pieces, more or less:
trumpet, two saxes, electric guitar, bass and drums. They have a previous
album on Cadence called No(w) Music, which I haven't heard. This
one was pieced together from two sets of sessions, with Lynn Johnston's
baritone sax replacing Jeff Chan's tenor sax on the latter. Lane plays
bass, and it's safe to say he's studied his Mingus -- for his bass, of
course, but also for his compositional approach, and perhaps even more
importantly for his skill at taking a mid-sized group and making them
sound monstrous. One play doesn't begin to reveal everything that's
going on here -- thus far the only track that's sunk in is the last
one, something called "The Schnube." Will get back to it in due course.
[B+(**)]

Terra Hazelton: Anybody's Baby (2004, HealyOPhonic):
Jeff Healey's sometime singer, she has more growl than purr in her
voice, which probably suits her more for rockabilly like "Long As
I'm Movin'" than the trad jazz her band, with guest spots from Marty
Grosz, plays so well. No complaints about the band, but the most
touching thing here is the closer, a country-ish thing she sings
over nothing but her own strummed guitar.
B+(***)

And these are final grades/notes on records I put back for further
listening the first time around.

Fattigfolket: Le Chien et la Fille (2005 [2006],
ILK): Four musicians from Norway and Sweden. Recorded in France.
Released in Denmark. Trumpet, sax, bass and drums -- gives them
two leads, some harmonic options, no chords to tie them down.
Mostly mid-tempo or slower, graceful, elegant, but parts kick
in above the ECM line.
B+(**)

Pierre Dørge & New Jungle Orchestra: Negra Tigra
(2005 [2006], ILK): Herb Robertson adds to a lineup that is already
heavy on brass and pushes them uncomfortably close to the brink.
Crowding ten musicians onto two microphones also adds to the raw
edge of the sound. The pieces demonstate that the this time the
jungle is in Vietnam, although they don't integrate eastern sounds
nearly as well as Billy Bang has done. But the five "Negra Tigra"
fragments that frame the pieces take "Tiger Rag" into the scrappy
jungle of the avant-garde, and that's what they do best.
B+(**)

Mold: Rotten in Rødby (2005 [2006], ILK): Another
two horn quartet -- Anders Banke on saxes and clarinets, Stephan
Meinberg on trumpets -- only with Mark Solborg's guitars and gadgets
instead of bass. Can play dense and rockish or loose and free. Don't
know much about the group: three Danes, one German, met in New York,
one previous album, they like to muck around with capitalization,
usually spelling the group name moLd. There must be a dozen
more or less comparable groups in Scandinavia -- would be a project
to sort them out, and may become worth tackling before too long.
B+(**)

Ab Baars Quartet: Kinda Dukish (2005 [2006], Wig):
Ten Ellington pieces, played more than loose -- in most cases only
snatches of the familiar themes emerge unscathed. Baars plays
clarinet more than tenor sax, so the heft added by trombonist
Joost Buis is essential.
B+(**)

The Bennie Maupin Ensemble: Penumbra (2003 [2006],
Cryptogramophone): I know very little by Maupin -- certainly nothing
that sounds like this. Looked him up on AMG and their Similar Artists
list starts: Branford Marsalis, David Murray, Howard Johnson, Sam Rivers,
Joe Henderson. Can't imagine what they have in common, much less in
common with Maupin. Chico Freeman is the next guy on the list (maybe
he's plausible) then Marty Ehrlich and George Coleman -- huh? Maupin's
main instrument here is bass clarinet, followed by tenor and soprano
sax, alto flute, and piano. The Ensemble adds bass, drums, percussion,
working around whatever Maupin brings front and center. Mostly he
brings an attractive, loose, low key album, that does little to
resolve his stylistic affinities. Maybe he doesn't have any.
B+(*)

Carl Maguire: Floriculture (2002 [2005], Between
the Lines): This recalls Monk's quartet, both in lineup and in the
trickiness of the compositions: the leader plays piano while alto
saxophonist Chris Mannigan tries to negotiate the unexpected changes.
But whereas Monk mostly found odd notes that somehow worked, Maguire
is more devious in his twists and inversions. It's a credit to the
band that they hold it all together -- especially bassist Trevor
Dunn, who gets the added challenge of a tribute to Mark Dresser.
B+(***)

Johnnie Valentino: Stingy Brim (2004 [2006],
Omnitone): What's immediately striking here is the instrumentation.
Three-fifths of the group would make an organ-guitar-drums trio,
but their music eschews groove for shifty postmodernist patterns.
The other two-fifths are horns, but they're meant to provide an
old sound: Bob Sheppard favors clarinet over tenor sax, and Randy
Jones plays tuba in its ancient bass mode. Organist Mick Rossi
also plays harmonium, mixing a little Italian roots music into
the New Orleans mud. The leader plays guitar. The promo sheet
says he "grew up in the '60s and '70s in a predominantly Italian
South Philadelphia neighborhood filled with musicians, including
guitarists Eddie Lang and Pat Martino." Lang died in 1933, so
that's a faux pas, even if he's a certain influence. Martino was
more direct, but Valentino's heady mix of old and new moves well
beyond his mentors.
B+(***)

Avishai Cohen: Continuo (2005 [2006], RazDaz/Sunnyside):
Bassist-led piano trio, with Amos Hoffman's oud added on half of the
cuts to heighten the Middle Eastern influences. No political statement,
but my considerable distance the continuum between Israeli and Lebanese
music is more pronounced than its disjunction. The cover depicts a man,
back turned to the camera, walking up a barren hill -- reminds me of
sunburnt badlands in Wyoming at the end of summer, but could be Israel,
or Lebanon, or points east like Syria or Jordan. Without idiots running
around with guns it's hard to tell, and pleasing not to care. I do have
some reservations about Cohen's fondness for classical music, which
show up most prominently on "Arava." But the two electric bass pieces
at the end more than make up for it.
B+(***)

Jessica Williams: Billy's Theme: A Tribute to Dr. Billy
Taylor (2006, Origin): Two caveats here. One is that I'm
not familiar enough with Taylor to figure out how these pieces --
all Williams originals, so most certainly not even in Taylor's
songbook -- link up. The other is that I'm rarely smitten by solo
piano, and when it does happen it's usually someone with enough
left hand to keep a whole rhythm section running. This is not one
of those moments -- the record is patient and introspective, but
I'm drawn into it anyway. Nor is this the first time she's overcome
my prejudices.
B+(***)

Marc Cary: Focus (2006, Motema Music): Looks like
Cary's main business -- can't say about interests -- is in taking
his Fender Rhodes into funkier territory than the usual smooth jazz
jive, but this is a conventional acoustic piano trio and the fare
is respectable postbop, a bit faster and louder than usual. Cary
has some impressive credentials, including a stint working for
Betty Carter, and can clearly go anywhere he wants. David Ewell
plays bass and Samir Gupta drums plus a little tabla -- nice
touch, he might be another name to remember.
B+(**)

Metta Quintet: Subway Songs (2005 [2006], Sunnyside):
From "Morning Rush" to "Evening Rush," most pieces start with a bit of
subway noise then flower into delicate, exquisitely detailed postbop.
Only five pieces, with Mark Gross's alto sax offset by Marcus Strickland
on tenor, soprano and bass clarinet; Helen Sung's tart piano, Joshua
Ginsberg's bass, and H. Benjamin Schuman's drums. Schuman founded an
educational outfit, JazzReach, which this group is tied with. Makes
some sense that they all teach, given how close to the state of the
art their music feels. I usually like it a little rougher, but this
is so slick my druthers can't get much traction.
B+(**)

Helen Sung Trio: Helenistique (2005 [2006], Fresh
Sound New Talent): Don't know when or where she was born, but her
"Chinese heritage" was tempered by growing up in Houston, and she
got a couple of music degrees in Austin before switching to jazz,
following the not-unusual track of study in Boston and career in
New York. Plays piano. Has a quote on her website from a similar
pianist named Kenny Barron, something about "her flawless technique,
great imagination, great harmonic conception and real understanding
of the language of jazz." As a critic, I probably would have fudged
that a bit, but he's basically right on the money. One original here,
"H*Town," leads off and reprised at the end, a vamp with some bite.
It holds up as well as everything else -- pop standards, jazz standards
including a Monk-Ellington-James P. Johnson sequence, Prince's "Alphabet
Street" -- and there's something interesting going on in all of them.
Comes with the Lewis Nash seal of approval.
B+(***)

Bill Carrothers: Shine Ball (2003-04 [2005], Fresh
Sound New Talent): Was wondering whether I hadn't graded Helen Sung's
piano trio too conservatively when I put this piano trio album on.
Turns out conservatively is right. Sung builds on the tradition, but
here Carrothers goes somewhere else. It's not just that he plays a
prepared piano -- not sure what "foreign substances" were applied
where, but the piano rarely sounds like anything other than a normal
piano, while the occasional metallic noises sound like they may just
as well be coming off Gordon Johnson's bass or Dave King's drum set.
The analogy to the banned baseball pitch is that Carrothers also
applied foreign substance to his piano. The idea is to surprise
the batter, or listener, with an unpredictable break, but as with
the pitch the real trick is control. As with many spitballers,
the prepared piano may itself be a feint -- mostly the piano
comes through clear and sharp, while the improvs sneak past.
A-

Cuong Vu: It's Mostly Residual (2005, ArtistShare):
I've heard Vu in interesting contexts before, and this got some play
in last year's year-end lists, so I tracked it down. Mostly rather
noisy fusion work built on Stomu Takeishi's bass riffs, with Ted Poor
on drums and the leader on trumpet. I usually like Takeishi's work,
but don't get much out of him here. More interesting is "Patchwork,"
which at least starts quiet and measured, where "recruited guest"
Bill Frisell is conspicuously in the mix, then stretches out and
breaks up a bit.
B

Liberty Ellman: Ophiuchus Butterfly (2005 [2006],
Pi): English guitarist, hangs in avant circles in downtown New York.
Leads a six piece group here, often just directing traffic between
the three horns -- Steve Lehman on alto sax, Mark Shim on tenor sax,
and Jose Davila on tuba -- which is all the trickier because the
rhythms are so hacked up: "body-moving" is what he aims for, but
that doesn't seem to mean all the body moving in the same direction.
Don't think it quite comes together, but there's no shortage of
interesting ideas here.
B+(**)

Dave Liebman/Steve Swallow/Adam Nussbaum: We Three: Three
for All (2005 [2006], Challenge): I think they intended We
Three for a group name, but I'm annoyed enough with the extra
bookkeeping of dealing with ad hoc groups that I'll stick with the
artists-first listing. The news here is that Liebman has finally
turned in a good album after three or four duds in the time I've
been doing Jazz CG. It helps that he's playing more tenor, but his
soprano has something this time, and -- well, I didn't notice the
flutes, so they must not be too bad. The bigger help is probably
that he's got a rhythm section that keeps him on his game. Not
exactly a breakthrough. Just very solid all around.
B+(**)

Martin Speake: Change of Heart (2002 [2006], ECM):
English alto saxist. Don't know his other work, but this quartet
with Bob Stenson on piano, Mick Hutton on bass, and Paul Motian
on drums plays out thoughtfully. Stenson is probably the focal
point. This is a good example of his work, and of Motian as well.
The sax runs laconic and/or wistful -- nice, but alto seems a
shade too bright for this music.
B+(**)

"Killer" Ray Appleton/Melvin Rhyne: Latin Dreams
(2004 [2006], Lineage): Russian guitarist Ilya Lushtak honors his
heroes by recording with them. On the Hank Jones/Frank Wess album,
he mostly took a back seat, but on this organ trio plus congas --
Latin, get it? -- he fills a more critical role. May be too early
to dub him the new Grant Green, but how about the new Billy Butler?
B+(**)

Michael Musillami's Dialect: Fragile Forms (2006,
Playscape): The guitarist's songs might not seem so fragile if
pianist Michael Madsen treated them more gently, but that would
miss the point, not to mention some terrific piano. Drew Gress
and Matt Wilson square off the quartet, firming up the bottom.
The only problem with focusing on the fractures is that is slights
the Ellingtonian elegance of something like "Emmett Spencer."
B+(***)

Shot x Shot (2005 [2006], High Two): Philadelphia
quartet, two saxes, bass and drums. Two of the guys, alto saxist Dan
Scofield and bassist Matt Engle, also work with Sonic Liberation
Front, but nothing Cuban here. I suspect that the effective leader
is drummer Dan Capecchi, who wrote the first two pieces and sets
the tone throughout. Mostly mid-tempo, with intertwined saxes and
a lot of internal tension.
B+(***)

Thomas Strønen: Parish (2005 [2006], ECM):
Norwegian drummer, the founder of Food, generally classified as
a post-rock band, often dabbles in electronics. But this one is
a straight acoustic jazz quartet firmly planted into ECM's old
age Nordic aesthetic -- some irregularities in the percussion
pop up here and there, but mostly the drummer goes with the mild
flow set by Bobo Stenson's piano, Fredrik Ljungkvist's clarinet
or tenor sax, and Mats Eilertsen's bass. Well done, especially
for Stenson, and another facet to a musician worth watching.
B+(**)

Thomas Strønen: Pohlitz (2006, Rune Grammofon):
Norwegian drummer goes solo, jazz cred evidently secured by
improvising it all live. The credits suffice as an outline:
"beatable items, live electronic treatments, music." Not sure
whether the latter is meant as a discreet input or the sum of
the parts. Sounds a bit like Harry Partch to me, with chime-type
objects but no strings. But he shows his jazz cred by swinging
some. Been on the fence over this one for a good while -- it's
rather slight, but in the end it's too fascinating to skip over.
A-

Paul Motian: On Broadway Vol. 4 (2005 [2006],
Winter & Winter): Fifty years after he came of age in the
Bill Evans Trio, Motian may still be the busiest drummer in jazz,
with a dozen or more new albums over the last two years. But not
he hardest working drummer. His secret is economy: no flash,
nothing so tedious as keeping a beat, just a bare minimum to
keep everyone on edge. He's stingy enough with this Trio + One
that we won't let his two guests play on the same cut. Pianist
Masabumi Kikuchi warms his spots up, while singer Rebecca Martin
cuts hers back to a hushed stroll. In both cases the songs do
the work, and Chris Potter's sax fills out the space.
A-

Pierre Favre/Yang Jing: Two in One (2005 [2006],
Intakt): Primarily the work of Yang Jing, who plays pipa, a
four-stringed lute-like instrument. She mastered it as a soloist
in the Chinese National Orchestra. Takes a while, but it grows
on you. Favre is a Swiss drummer, works mostly in avant-garde
circles but his interests are pretty broad. His effect here is
much less obvious, but at the very least he deserves credit for
making this happen, and probably a good deal more.
B+(**)

Michael Bates' Outside Sources: A Fine Balance
(2004 [2006], Between the Lines): Second album by this group --
the first was called Outside Sources and attributed to
Michael Bates. But not really the same group -- this one expands
from three to four, adding a trumpet to make your basic pianoless
avant quartet. Up front are Kevin Turcotte on trumpet and Quinsin
Nachoff on reeds. The leader plays bass and composes all the
pieces, while Mark Timmermans drums. Lately quite a few groups
have been structured like this: the format offers the two horns
lots of options, but it also lets the bass run the pulse, which
sets everything else up. Perhaps as many as a half dozen of my
favorite albums over the last couple of years were set up this
way. The difference between them and this one was that they
usually featured great musicians, especially in the rhythm
section -- William Parker and Hamid Drake, Mark Dresser and
Gerry Hemingway. I don't mean to knock Bates, who is a capable
guy doing very interesting work here, but his group hasn't
pushed itself to the forefront yet.
B+(**)

Mujician: There's No Going Back Now (2005 [2006],
Cuneiform): This stalwart Anglo-improv quartet goes back to 1990,
maybe earlier -- pianist Keith Tippett used the name in 1981 on a
solo album, so how do you count that? The Penguin Guide files the
group albums under saxophonist Paul Dunmall's name these days --
he's certainly the one who brings the noise. The others are Paul
Rogers on bass and Tony Levin on drums. They are less prominent
as leaders but have extensive discographies as well. Their circle
is one that I've never really penetrated: I've heard five out of
thirty albums Penguin Guide lists under Tippett and Dunmall, but
can't say as I've made much sense out of them. This one doesn't
help much either. There are moments of bracing sax, but they seem
few and far between. There are moments when the piano or bass
threatens to do something interesting, but they soon fade. Every
now and then the record sort of drops into the subsonic realm,
but only one piece is listed. Seems short, but 45:30 should be
plenty to get your point across, if you have one.
B

Trio 3 (Oliver Lake, Reggie Workman, Andrew Cyrille): Time
Being (2005 [2006], Intakt): Turns out that this group has
at least three more albums under the Trio 3 name, so I've changed
my attribution and filing here. The musicians' names figure large
on the cover, as well they should, so we'll keep them up front here,
in parens. Otherwise I'd just have to name them in the review body,
then point out that what they do is pretty much what you'd expect
them to do, given what they've each done, together and apart, over
their collective hundred-plus man-years on jazz's leading edge.
B+(***)

Eri Yamamoto: Cobalt Blue (2006, Thirsty Ear):
This picks up nicely from her piano trio performance on William
Parker's Luc's Lantern -- except, of course, bassist David
Ambrosio doesn't make nearly as much of an impression as Parker.
But most of this is upbeat, where she shows a strong left hand,
and her touch is fine on the chillout closer. Covers of Porter,
Gershwin, and a Japanese folk song, plus a batch of originals.
B+(**)

NOW Orchestra & Marilyn Crispell: Pola (2004
[2005], Victo): A large free jazz orchestra, led by Coat Cooke,
based in Vancouver, provincial enough that they still feel the
need to keep their anarchy intact. They've been around a long
time -- at least since 1987, maybe longer -- but they only record
when they get a guest, and Crispell is a dandy. I don't think
she's ever recorded in a group like this -- one's tempted to
compare them with Alex von Schlippenbach's Globe Unity Orchestra,
but the Germans are far more violent even if their pianist isn't.
Crispell's solos are the gems here, but the ensemble work impresses
more often than not. Could be I should hold this back in case it
convinces me to slide it up a notch, but working near the deadline
the best way to get it in is as what it certainly is, an honorable
mention.
B+(***)

Pity the Nation

One reason for suspecting the US of suspect motives in Israel's
rampage is that it's been so successful at pushing Iraq off the front
of the news programs. While you were so distracted, Iraq has had one
of the worst weeks since the occupation began. Still, that's not all
a plus for the Bush regime: the Iraq timeslot has been so compressed
there's no space at all for those countervailing "good news" stories
you always hear that nobody is telling about. For instance, Dexter
Filkins of New Pravda managed to find an Iraqi Sunni to come forward
and beg the US to stay. Not that that's unadulterated good news. It's
certainly not if anyone thinks the Shia militias are more dangerous
than the Americans.

Israel's rampage has had another perverse effect on the news media:
now they're counting days since the start of the war with Lebanon --
or Hezbollah, as they like to put it, but Hezbollah is very much a real
part of Lebanon, and Israel doesn't make much of a distinction anyway.
What's been lost in the coverage is what Israel's doing in the Occupied
Territories these days. It was also lost in the day counter: evidently
that stage of Israel's rampage doesn't count, even though it was the
best war Israel could drum up until Hezbollah struck. In some ways this
is the old story of the invisibility of the Palestinians. But it also
emphasizes the main difference between the Palestinian and Lebanese
stages of this war: Hezbollah matters more because only Hezbollah is
capable of killing Israelis within Israel proper. So what this proves
is what we should have realized by now: that Israeli lives count for
much more than Lebanese lives, who in turn count for much more than
Palestinian lives, at least as understood by our media.

I've added Robert Fisk's book on Israel's old war in Lebanon,
Pity the Nation, to the reading sidebar. I actually read the
book a couple of years ago, so it's not really current reading, but
it's as good a place as any to start with to catch up with the past.
Not that it covers everything: the book was originally published in
1990, which is basically where it ends, although the Nation Books
paperback edition includes a preface written in 2002. Avi Shlaim's
The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World covers the outline
of the war, at least from an Israeli viewpoint. It doesn't have the
visceral impact of Fisk's book, but is critical enough to be useful.
I bought but haven't tackled Fisk's more recent The Great War
for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East -- at 1136
pages, it's far more than I want to tackle, but I have at least
pulled it off the shelf, and may at least poke around in it.

Actually, probably the best historical outline I know of on Lebanon
is a videotaped lecture by Ahmad Dallal, which was part of A Jewish
Voice for Peace's 2002 series How Did We Get Here?. The main
problem is that the sound quality on the tape is atrocious -- so bad
that we skipped over the tape when we showed the rest of the series
here in Wichita a couple of years ago. But I did write a
handout to go with the
lecture, and this provides a useful chronology. Wish I had a transcript
of the lecture. (The link to the videotapes is broken, and I can't
find another link at this point, so this plug may be for nought.)
Wouldn't be a bad idea to dig out that videotape and show it, warts
and all. Would be an even better idea for someone competent to film
a new lecture by Dallal.

The Tanya Reinhardt book is another that I had read some time ago,
but dug out based on relevance to current events. I pulled it out for
a quote on Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon, which neither settled
the old war nor foreclosed a new one. I'll add books like this to
the sidebar as events unfold and I see fit. Meanwhile, I'm reading
about future disasters, even while distracted by current ones.

Sifting Facts From Propaganda

There's a commonplace saying that goes: everyone's entitled to their
own opinion, but not to their own facts. Yet when people debate various
aspects of Israel's current, as yet unnamed, war, one thing that should
be obvious to all now is that we do not have a single authoritative set
of facts to refer to. This is largely because most of the decisions
that directed, provoked and/or escalated this war were made in secrecy,
and no one has yet been able to debrief those actors and build up a
coherent narrative of who did what, when, where, and why. But this is
also because the Israeli and US governments and allied organizations
have worked hard at pushing a particular story line that suits their
political interests, and thus far this story line has been largely
accepted at face value by the US media and its band of merry helpers,
the organized punditry. Yet much of this official story line makes
little sense. The likelihood that it is true as stated is very low.
Indeed, we can look back at past story lines that came from the same
sources and see a very poor track record -- not that many people have
managed to straighten out the lies and innuendos they were originally
told. The people who spin out these stories have a lot of experience
with what works -- at least what they can get away with, at least
well enough to suit their purposes. That is a large part of the
reason Israel has been so successful in the propaganda war. There,
at least, they are battling an enemy they know well, one they've
repeatedly been able to subdue: the American people.

In theory, Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran could be waging their
own propaganda war as well. They are, however, at a considerable
disadvantage. After all, the first two are officially outlawed, so
anyone willing to help them could be prosecuted for aiding and
abetting terrorists. They also have communications problems, given
that the NSA is likely to feed any electronic surveillance they
come across to Israel for bombing. Syria and Iran have no better
standing, even if they have more resources. Moreover, each of these
organizations has propaganda interests that distinctly differ from
the US public: they need first of all to reinforce their support
in their own communities, then to obtain support from sympathetic
communities. The US public is clearly a prize they can't win and
a luxury they can't afford. One consequence of this is that if we
want to get to the bottom of this story -- to understand what has
happened and what is likely to happen -- we have to approach what
we've been told, which almost all comes from one very biased party,
with skepticism and seek out countervailing facts wherever possible.
To make sense of the story, we first of all have to make it make
sense.

As I see it, there are several key questions for which we have
no real answers -- at least beyond what the official story line
implausibly tells us. These are (in bold below):

Did the elected Hamas officials in Palestine choose to initiate
hostilities by tunnelling under that border post and kidnapping that
Israeli soldier? It's probably safe to assume that Israel's retaliation
was predictable, and therefore a consequence of the Palestinian action.
(This is not to say that the retaliation was what Israel should have
done -- just what it was going to do, and that Hamas had every reason
to expect Israel to do just that. I don't know this for a fact, but I
strongly suspect that Hamas has a pretty accurate understanding of how
Israel behaves.) So the question is whether provoking this assault was
a strategic move on the part of Hamas. If so, we would then need to
understand why. But I suspect that the incident was not directed by
Hamas political leadership, and therefore had no strategic meaning.
At the time, Israel was hard pressed to establish any such connection,
blaming a Hamas splinter group working with non-Hamas groups and some
possible connection to a Hamas factional leadership in Syria -- and
therefore implying some sort of official Syrian connection.

If Hamas didn't direct the raid that captured the Israeli soldier,
who did? And why? I imagine that there are a number of small groups
that could have chosen independently to mount this operation, but the
sophistication of the attack -- tunnelling under the border -- and the
evident intent to negotiate a prisoner exchange suggest that this had
some degree of organization with external communications. In other
words, while the operation may not have been directed by Hamas, it was
also not a totally ad hoc event -- although it's worth noting that the
way Israel positioned itself could have made it possible for a single
madman to trigger the whole massive retaliation. Presumably the options
for who include Islamic Jihad and various disaffected factions of Hamas
and Fatah: what they have in common is a belief that there is no viable
political path to securing Palestinian rights from Israel -- in other
words, that the only way to get Israel to change is to apply force.
(This is, as far as it goes, a sobering analysis. Israel certainly
has a lot of faith in the efficacy of force, and that lesson has not
been lost on many Palestinians.) Other options include agents of other
governments: Syria and Iran are the ones the official line wants to
implicate, but it is very unlikely that either operational capability
in Gaza. A far more likely agency would be Israel. They certainly
have intelligence operatives in Gaza. They have a long, albeit only
spottily documented, history of subversive operations. And they have
a fairly good motive, given their extensive war plans. I don't want
to go overboard pursuing this line -- never cared for conspiracy
theories, and this one is almost reflexive in some quarters -- but
the fact is that nothing Israel does in this area is transparent,
and it can't be ruled out on grounds of scruples.

The why question needs to be delimited lest we drag in the whole
history of the conflict, which is, of course, the real why. We need
to focus on Israel's predictable response, who benefits from that,
and why. This rules out one common war rationale, at least from the
Palestinian side: the idea that you're strong enough to press your
advantage. The Palestinians had no credible advantage, no way to
force Israel to do anything, so no hope of conventional success in
starting this. So the question from their standpoint boils down to:
did they somehow conclude that getting pounded by Israel would be
preferable to the status quo? The usual answer to that question is
that the Palestinian militants feel that it is necessary to remind
Israel that they won't just lie down and submit to Israeli force --
in effect, that no matter what Israel throws at them, they shall
persevere, fight back as best they can, and press on. A variation
is that by fighting back they return at least some of the pain they
received, reminding Israel that their acts have costs. In order to
gauge how realistic such a position is, you have to look at what
Israel was doing before the incident, and ask whether Palestinians
could afford to stand by defenseless without replying somehow.

Did Hezbollah leadership, specifically Sheikh Nasrallah, direct
the raid on Israel's northern border outpost that resulted in the
capture of two Israeli soldiers? And if so, what was the strategy?
Again, I think it's fair to assume that Hezbollah leadership could
have anticipated what Israel would do in response to such an attack.
(In fact, they took the trouble of setting up an ambush in case
Israeli soldiers stormed over the border following the attack. The
soldiers obliged, and four more were killed, so you'd have to say
that they thought the attack through at least that far.) Again, I
don't know, but it does seem likely that Nasrallah and Hezbollah
knew what they were doing and acted deliberately for some form of
strategic reasoning. Just what that was is hard to say, but it is
very likely that the following figured into the calculation: a long
list of outstanding complaints against Israel including the Shaba
Farms border dispute and numerous Lebanese held in Israeli prisons;
substantial international pressure that persuaded Syria to withdraw
its troops from Lebanon, and that sought to disarm Hezbollah, which
would leave them defenseless against future Israeli attacks; their
ability to amass a rather substantial quantity of weapons, which at
least for now put them in a relative position of strength; various
aspects of events in Gaza, including solidarity with Palestinians
including Hamas, and the perception that Israel may be weakening
itself, at least in terms of public relations, by the brutality of
their attacks on Gaza and the West Bank. Most decisions to start a
war are based on a complicated calculus of pluses and minuses over
time. Hezbollah may have been willing to risk war if they thought
that war with Israel was inevitable sooner or later and that they
were stronger now than they might be in the future. In this regard,
success of US and Israeli efforts to marginalize Hezbollah and its
principal weapons suppliers in Syria and Iran would only have served
to precipitate a Hezbollah decision to go to war.

The next question is whether the governments of Syria and/or
Iran had anything to do with directing the initial events in Gaza and
Lebanon that triggered this war. The relationship of both countries
to whatever groups may have been responsible for the Gaza event does
not seem to have been very large: moral support, asylum for refugees,
not much more. Palestinians have very little in the way of arms, and
Israel seems to be pretty effective at controlling the flow of money
into the Occupied Territories. As such, it seems unlikely that the
Gaza event was directed from outside the country. Hezbollah is a
different story. Clearly, Hezbollah has a substantial arms stash, and
a good deal of that must have come from outside Lebanon, which makes
Syria and/or Iran likely suspects. Providing arms may have been a
prerequisite to Hezbollah undertaking war with Israel. However,
providing arms is not the same thing as controlling when and how
those arms are used. Clearly, the arms providers have some moral
responsibility here, and have shown some moral indifference -- the
same statements can be made about the US providing arms to Israel,
for the exact same reasons. I suspect that Hezbollah's relationship
to its arms suppliers is the same as Israel's. As Moshe Dayan once
said [something like], "The Americans give us arms, money, and
advice. We take the arms and money, and ignore the advice." Just
as the Americans have their own reasons for arming an Israel that
they cannot control or direct -- or chose not to try -- so have
Syria and Iran their own reasons for supporting Hezbollah.

However, beyond that point we need to understand that Syria
and Iran are different countries, with different interests and
needs. Syria is a small, poor Arab country, ruled by a secular
political party, which is in turn ruled by a family that belongs
to a small religious minority -- Allawites, a group that has some
affinity to Shiites, but is distinct, and in any case faces a large
Sunni majority. Syria has fought several wars with Israel, and
generally done poorly, losing the still-occupied Golan Heights in
1967. Syria has also had problems with Turkey and Iraq, and has a
separatist-minded Kurdish minority. Syria has a complicated history
with Lebanon, ever since the French carved Lebanon off from Syria
in order to create a predominantly Christian client state. After
Lebanon broke into civil war, Syria was invited in with support
of the US and Israel to restore order. Syria maintained a longterm
presence based on shifting alliances -- at various times Christian,
Druze, PLO, Sunni, and/or Shiite -- until the US engineered their
ouster recently. The Lebanese occupation was important to Syria
primarily for economic reasons. There is little if any evidence
that Syria looks forward to further hostilities with Israel, even
though they are nominal enemies, and Syria is willing to provide
comfort to opponents of Israel. On the other hand, Israel and the
US have actively villified Syria as an enemy -- a position that
they have the luxury of taking as major powers, and that Syria is
unable and unwilling to reciprocate.

Iran is a much larger, much wealthier country, non-Arab, with
a large Shiite majority. The nation is effectively ruled by the
Shiite clergy although it also has democratic institutions which
help establish the legitimacy of the government. The US considers
Iran an enemy due to the 1979 revolution which deposed the Shah --
a longtime, much hated agent installed by the CIA in a coup in
1953 that led to US oil companies taking over most Iranian oil --
and subsequent events, including an embarrassing year-long crisis
when US embassy workers were held hostage by Iranian students.
Following the revolution Iran's clerics made an effort to project
their power throughout the Middle East, which included a challenge
to Saudi Arabia's stewardship of the Muslim holy sites and support
for Shiite militias in Lebanon and Iraq -- the hated Hezbollah on
the one hand, the SCIRI and Dawa parties of the US-backed Iraqi
regime on the other. The US pursued its grudge against Iran by
backing Saddam Hussein when he invaded Iran in the '80s. Israel,
on the other hand, favored Iran over Iraq, sold weapons to Iran,
and bombed Iraq's nuclear research facility at Iran's behest. So
it's fair to say that recent sabre rattling between Israel and
Iran is more a matter of momentary political convenience than a
longstanding conflict.

Recent history shows that the US has repeatedly threatened both
Syria and Iran -- especially Iran, designated by Bush along with
Iraq and North Korea as an Axis of Evil. Also that Syria and Iran
have done very little to challenge or threaten the US, although
both are no doubt worried about US threats, and Iran has clearly
made efforts to build up its defenses against possible US attack.
(Whether Iran's nuclear program has anything to do with those
defenses is an open question, but the prospect of nuclear arms
is the main public focus of US efforts to isolate and undermine
Iran.) As with Syria, there is very little sound reason for Iran
to reciprocate America's threats. Iran is not as weak as Syria,
but is in no shape to take on the US or Israel. The only reason
either state might have to aggressively risk war would be if they
were convinced that the US and/or Israel had plans that made war
inevitable. Neither appears to be the case right now, although
Israel feels free to harass Syria and the US has leaked plans to
bomb Iranian nuclear sites. Syria, in fact, has been so averse
to war that when Israel bombed a Syrian site a couple of years
ago, supposedly in response for a suicide bombing within Israel,
Syria did nothing more than complain to the UN, resulting in a
US veto of a resolution condemning Israel. So the answer to this
question, contrary to the propaganda line, is almost certainly
no.

To what extent has the US been involved in, and approved of,
Israel's military escalations in Gaza and Lebanon? It's quite
possible that the answers here is none -- that Bush's policy of
giving Israel a blank check means no consultation is necessary.
On the other hand, there clearly has been collaboration on the
marginalization of Hamas and Hezbollah, the unilateral removal
of settlements from Gaza and US support for the West Bank wall,
the sealing off and starvation of the Occupied Territories, the
presure to remove Syrian forces from Lebanon, and the general
strategic position of Israel vs. Iran. Those are all policies
that lead more or less directly to the events that triggered this
war. The US also continues to provide Israel with extraordinary
quantities of cash and weapons, and the US automatically vetoes
any attempt to balance or settle the conflict through the UN. It's
also clear that the US is consulting with Israel on undermining,
or at least postponing, international demands for a cease fire.
Therefore, it's fair to say that the US and Israel are working
toward the same strategic goals, and therefore are complicit in
each other's actions.

There are many additional questions that we still have little
in the way of answers to. Judging from reports in the US media --
at least the claims of the US State Department -- the G8 leaders
unanimously endorsed the US-Israeli position that Syria and Iran
are responsible for these events. So how did that agreement come
about (assuming that the reports were even right)? What is the
real reaction and involvement of other Arab countries like Egypt,
Jordan and Saudi Arabia? (Again, it is widely reported that those
nations endorse Israel's efforts to crush Hezbollah. Also that
Al Qaeda's anti-Shiites are supporting Israel on this one.)

Sooner or later it will be very interesting, at least for
those of us safe on the sidelines, to find out just how these
particular historical events have unfolded. But for now, we
don't know much more than that much of what we are being told,
especially by Israel and Bush and their political and media
allies, is certainly wrong.

Cooling-Off Period

The heatwave broke today in Wichita, following four or five days with
high temperatures in the 106-109F range, including at least two all-time
records. When I went out to a movie last night, after sundown around 9PM,
it was still 102. Got up this morning and it was overcast and near 80.
Forecast was for 98, but it looks like it only got to 83. Didn't even
get the thunderstorms predicted.

In honor of the weather, we'll take a day off from the war -- a luxury
we still have in Kansas, but one not available everywhere. In particular,
I'm reminded that Gaza is if anything hotter, with no electric power
available for air conditioning even for those few normally able to
afford it. Much the same is true in Baghdad, which in three years has
never managed to restore appreciable electric power. Trying to get some
work done here, writing my Jazz Consumer Guide -- finally making some
progress there -- and reading about peak oil. More on all that later.
Meanwhile, let's take care of some movies.

Movie: The Notorious Bettie Page. Mary Harron's movie
on America in the '50s and the nation's mass confusion over female
skin -- one hesitates to say sex, although not for lack of confusion.
The film was mostly shot in black and white: there are many strange
and rather perverse things about the '50s, but one is surely that
cinematographers feel obligated to use black and white. One wonders
whether this will change once moviemakers are young enough not to
remember the era's primitive television. I suppose one could also
point to the prevalence of black and white photography in the light
porn magazines of the day, before Playboy caught on as some
sort of class act. Page was a fairly light, shallow character, which
may be why she reflects the era so well.
B

Movie: Don't Come Knocking. Wim Wenders movie of a
Sam Shepard script about a cowboy actor who goes AWOL from a movie
set to get away from who know what and/or in search of who knows what.
Still, if it shows anything, it's that motivations are overrated. Far
more interesting what he finds than what he might have been looking
for, and it scarcely matters that Shepard's character himself may have
no clue at the end as to what he found -- the idea behind watching is
that we get to see. Terrific small parts: Eva Marie Saint as his
bemused mother; Jessica Lange as a fling who bore an unknown son;
Gabriel Mann as the surly, confused son; Fairuza Balk as the son's
flapper girlfriend; Sarah Polley as the mystery presence who puts
it all together; Tim Roth as a bounty hunter hired to track Shepard
down. Fine scenery. Just gets richer and richer as it all adds up.
A-

Movie: Water. Deepa Mehta's movie, set in India
(Rawalpindi?) in 1938, a point of disjunction between old ways
bound up in religion and caste and the coming revolution led by
Gandhi. Reportedly the third installment in a trilogy -- haven't
seen either of the others, so no idea how they fit. In this one,
a 7- or 8-year-old child bride is packed off to an ashram after
her unmet husband dies, to live a life of forced denial until she
too dies. The ashram has other women of different ages but same
fates, and four or five figure largely in the movie -- especially
an attractive, fair-skinned young widow who is pimped to support
the ashram. The child attaches herself to the woman, the woman is
courted by a young Brahmin lawyer who himself is a follower of
Gandhi; tragedy follows, ultimately providing a breakthrough for
the child. It's all a remarkable thing to watch. Needless to say,
between the river and the monsoon, there's no lack of water. The
class sketches and religious binds are laid out precisely and
elegantly.
A-

The Wichita Eagle decided that today would be the day to show
Israel some love. First up was a "reader view" from Judy Press,
AIPAC's hall monitor for south-central Kansas. She signs her
letters Executive Director, Mid-Kansas Jewish Federation. Her
letters never fail to appear whenever Israel feels pressed by
events to remind us that Israel only wants peace and security,
but once again has been forced to defend itself by fanatical
terrorists. She starts disingenuously, as usual:

When Israel pulled out of Gaza last year, it hoped the Palestinians
would take the opportunity to build a country. Unfortunately, the
Palestinians used their newfound independence to elect a terrorist
government and launch hundreds of Qassam rockets at Israel.

I shouldn't have to pick stuff like this apart -- the assumed level
of ignorance is staggering. All Israel did was pull its settlers out,
which cut their maintenance and security costs while making it easy to
punish Palestinians with all-night-long sonic booms. Israel kept the
borders sealed, maintaining a choke hold of Gaza's economy. Hamas had
only won their elections after an 18-month unilateral ceasefire. If
Israel had any interest in peace, they could have welcomed Hamas's
embrace of non-violence. Instead, they shut off civil and humanitarian
aid to the democratically elected Palestinian Authority and shelled
Gaza until they provoked the incident they used to justify a massive
escalation of collective punishment.

Press then tries to construct a similar story for Lebanon, most
conveniently starting "since 2000." She does slip up once: "Israel
made sacrifices for peace, withdrawing from territory that it won
in wars of aggression and exercising restraint when being
shelled and bombed." Emphasis added -- most Israeli propagandists
try to present Israel's many wars as defensive maneouvres. Then
she uncorks a mind-boggling analogy:

Imagine that a terrorist organization in Mexico, members of which
were elected to the Mexican government, was firing rockets at
population centers in Texas, killing and kidnapping American soldiers,
and blowing people up in shopping centers. The United States would
take the needed action to protect its citizens. Israel needs to do the
same.

Presumably she just made this up to switch the subject, although
it's amusing to consider analogies to Pancho Villa, who did conduct
a "terrorist" raid on an outpost in New Mexico, and General Pershing,
whose retaliatory raid deep into Mexico proved completely pointless
and more than a little embarrassing. Rather, the real sleight of hand
occurs at the end, where the unstated assumption is that Israel's
actions are meant to protect its citizens. Israel's escalation, on
top of a long history of Israeli "wars of aggression" has put their
citizens at risk for no possible gain. Punishment only exacerbates
the wounds, breeding more resistance; only through respect, justice
and peace can old wounds heal.

As if Press wasn't enough, the Eagle also published a column by
their "Christian music" critic and pet evangelical orifice, Brent
Castillo, explaining "Why are evangelicals supportive of Israel?"
I have to admit, this piece wasn't as bad as I feared. Castillo
offers "two primary reasons":

First, contrary to earlier forms of Christianity, many evangelicals
honor Jews as God's chosen people and as forefathers of the Christian
faith. Secondly, they respect Israel as a democracy and support its
right to defend itself.

I'm not sure whether he's being circumspect here or merely naive.
My evangelical grandfather was cheered by Israel for old fashioned
reasons: he thought that the return of the Jews to the Holy Land
prefigured the second coming of Christ and the end of times. That
was an idea shared by David Lloyd George, who actually did something
about it, signing the Balfour Declaration which established Britain's
sponsorship of the Zionist project. Nor has the idea gone away: Tim
LaHaye's series of Left Behind books on the theme have sold
some fifty million copies, making LaHaye a major player on the
Christian right. Yet premillennial dispensationalism, Armageddon,
and all that don't seem to have made it into the talking points
lists that guide how the right speaks to the public. Suppose they
have some polling that suggests it's not a good time to talk about
the end of the world?

In fact, Castillo equivocates all over the place -- proving, no
doubt, that he's not ready for Cal Thomas big time punditry:

Support for Israel can be tested by its political and military
policies. And some Christians may not understand the motives for
the conflict with Lebanon.

But the current aggression was provoked by the Islamic extremists
of Hezbollah, and their tactic of hiding among civilians has resulted
in the deaths of many noncombatants. The president of Iran has called
for Israel to be wiped out, and Hamas is committed to the destruction
of all Jews.

Israel is not without fault. Many Christians decry the plight of
the Palestinians and believe that better treatment would alleviate
much of the tensions.

What is clear is that there are no easy solutions to the conflicts
in the Middle East. Our best hope is a truce where all sides agree
to peaceably coexist. That's something people of all faith should
pray for.

There are worse things Christians can do than pray for peace, like
provide blind support for war. Clearly, Castillo has no idea why he's
taken the stand he has -- his factual assertions are mostly wrong,
most not even up to Press's standard of half-truths. So why does he,
and so many other evangelicals, come out so emphatically in support
of a belligerent foreign country they don't begin to understand? The
clue is in the first paragraphs of his column:

About 3,000 pro-Israel evangelicals met the past two days in
Washington, D.C. It was a gathering sponsored by a new organization
called Christians United for Israel, which is spearheaded by John
Hagee, a pastor of an 18,000-member church in San Antonio.

The simple reason is that the leaders of the political cult that
Castillo confuses with his religion have decided on their dogma, and
that's all the marching orders evangelicals need. With faith like
that, who needs understanding?

Connections

Got a note from one of my jazz publicists offering "thanks for your
lucid and perceptive analysis of the current mess in the Middle East."
I don't really expect that, and often wonder whether I should have two
blogs, one for music and the other for political matters. Actually,
the original plan was to have three: Terminal Zone for music, Notes
on Everyday Life for politics, and Tom Hull for brief pointers every
which way and personal notes. The websites exist, but the they're not
as usable as I'd like, and it's tough enough trying to keep one at
all fresh.

But I'd like to point out that Deborah Gordon is the person in
these parts who works the hardest to keep me up to date on Israel
and Palestine, and what I know or think would be much poorer were
it not for her. (Laura Tillem, of course, is the other one who keeps
me going.) Gordon teaches Women's Studies at Wichita State and has
done extensive research on Palestinian women under the occupation.
She somehow managed to get a letter printed in the Wichita Eagle
yesterday, so I thought I would record it here. Title was "Balance
missing":

The front-page story, "Wichita's Lebanese, Jews fear for families,"
(July 14 Eagle) was telling for who didn't appear anywhere in the
account. Not only on the ground is places like Rafah, but apparently
also in the only daily newspaper of Wichita, Palestinians are a kind
of absent presence -- there but not permitted to represent
themselves. Conceived of only through an Israeli-centric view of the
world. Palestinians are -- what? Half citizens, unless their point of
view first goes through an Israeli-centered censor, which means it's
not their point of view?

I know of at least one Palestinian family of Wichita that is
currently visiting relatives in the West Bank. The other day, the
Israeli forces killed 23 Palestinians. What exactly does it mean when
The Eagle excludes by design or even just oversight Palestinian
citizens and taxpayers of Wichita from the "local" interests in the
Middle East crisis? Are Palestinians here simply disposable, like
their relatives back in the Palestinian Territories?

These are fascinating intellectual questions and great grist for
the academic mill. It is empirically inaccurate and politically
suspect, however, to portray the impact of the Arab-Israeli conflict
for "families" in Wichita as if Palestinians don't have them here.

I think it's obvious that who one knows has an affect on how one
responds to such news. Wichita has a rather large and influential
Lebanese community, so when the war spread into Lebanon it became
impossible to pretend that this was only a matter of concern for
Israelis and their political fans here -- for practical purposes,
the latter are more commonly Christian zealots and warmongers than
Jews, who at least sympathize with real people in Israel, as opposed
to religious and ideological abstractions. The propaganda barrage
that has so dominated the airwaves in the last few weeks depends
on us not knowing or caring about anyone on the receiving end of
Israel's collective punishment -- again, we're not just talking
about the hundreds of Palestinians and Lebanese who have been
killed; those affected include hundreds of thousands without
electricity, with water and sewage systems damaged, with food
and essential supplies cut off or obstructed by destruction of
civilian infrastructure. That kind of collective punishment has
nothing to do with the provocations. It is not proportional and
it is not productive; it's just petty and vindictive, an effort
to poison any future prospect of peace. Yet most Americans, having
no connection to the people and no knowledge of the history, seem
happy to buy Israel's story line.

People with a real connection to what's happening do better
because they know better. I'm not sure that I count myself among
them, although I am lucky to know people like Deborah who know
people. But early on I seem to have picked up a pretty sensitive
bullshit detector, to use a term from a book by Neil Postman and
Charles Weingartner, Teaching as a Subversive Activity. I
also worked my way through Hegel's master-slave dialectic, which
shows how slavery damages the master as profoundly as the slave.
And even though I prefer nonfiction, I have enough literary sense
to be able to imagine other people's point of view. Those are all
skills and experiences that are sadly uncommon in America today,
which is why they can get away with such propaganda. But I wonder
how long they can keep the connections hidden.

Great Powers and Safe Havens for Terrorists

Here's a little item from the Eagle this morning. Title: "Turkey
calls on U.S., Iraq to stop Kurdish guerrillas."

Turkey called Monday for Iraq and the United States to crack down
on Kurdish guerrillas based in northern Iraq, and issued a veiled
threat to attack the rebel bases if there is no progress.

The U.S. ambassador to Turkey cautioned against a unilateral attack
on the insurgents, who are based in remote mountains in one of the few
stable parts of Iraq.

The guerrillas, who want autonomy for Turkey's Kurdish-dominated
southeast, have killed 15 Turkish security personnel since Thursday in
ambushes, roadside bombings and shootings.

Turkey's been making threats about Kurdish separatists operating
out of northern Iraq for years now, but it's striking that the number
of Turks killed "since Thursday" is similar to the number of Israelis
killed in that time frame. And far less than the number of Israeli
security forces killed or captured before Israel's massive retaliation
escalated the war, killing hundreds of non-combatants in Lebanon. So
in terms of provocation, Turkey would seem to have as much right and
reason to "self-defense" as Israel.

Of course, Turkey is not about to bomb Baghdad's airport, blockade
the Iraq's Persian Gulf ports, and seal off the country. Nor is Turkey
likely to bomb the political offices of the Kurdish political parties
that give comfort to anti-Turkish terrorists. The difference between
Turkey and Israel may or may not involve principles, but it certainly
is a matter of power advantage. Israel can pummel Lebanon because no
one will stand up for Lebanon, other than Hizbullah. Turkey might feel
similarly free with a powerless Iraqi government that, like Lebanon,
has no effective power over its sectarian militias, but in Iraq the
US is in Turkey's way. This is perhaps the only benefit Iraq receives
from the US occupation: it does force neighboring countries to think
twice before they plunge in.

On the other hand, this just underscores the absurdity of trying
to solve your domestic problems by attacking other countries. Turkey's
Kurdish problem is mostly Turkey's own failure to satisfy the desires
of its large Kurdish population. As is Israel's Palestinian problem.
Both countries face similar options: either provide more equitable
citizenship or greater autonomy. Both would rather rattle arms and
rail against the world beyond their borders than acknowledge what
they have done to themselves. Of course, Lebanon and Iraq have the
same sort of problems, if anything worse, but those problems have
been swamped by what Israel and the US have done to them -- some
countries do indeed have good reason to fear the world beyond their
borders. There's a simple lesson to be derived from all of this,
and that's that relative power distorts perception mightily. After
all, the one nation involved in all of this with the least to fear,
with the most trivial internal problems, is the United States --
the power that acts most recklessly and most tyranically of all.

Israel's Border Trap

Regarding Israel's belligerent attacks on Lebanon, or as it's viewed
here, Hizbullah's unprovoked act of war against Israel, I'm reminded of
a section that Tanya Reinhart wrote in her book Israel/Palestine:
How to End the War of 1948. The book was published in 2002, but
in it she quotes a column she wrote in 2000, at the time of Barak's
unilateral withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon (pp.
84-86; quotes are from the second edition, 2005):

But there are still a few puzzling questions [regarding the
withdrawal from Lebanon]. A first wonder -- how is it that the border
line has not been fortified and prepared? For a year, the government
and the army have been discussing the withdrawal from Lebanon and when
the moment came, it turned out that all that was done so far is to
approve the plans. In most areas, the work will take another year. A
second wonder -- how is it that there was not even a slight bargaining
attempt over the border line, which now passes in the middle of
[kibbutz] Manara's water reserve? There was not even bargaining over
areas which were probably held by Israel before 1978. . . . And a
third wonder -- how is it that the right-wing is not protesting?
Sharon seems to be furiously attacking Barak. But over what? Over the
fact that Barak didn't deliver harder "preventive blows" to Beirut
before the withdrawal. As for the withdrawal itself (to this
implausible and unprotected border line) -- Sharon is warmly
supportive.

It is actually easy to understand Sharon's stand. After all, he is
the first who proposed, three years ago, a unilateral withdrawal from
Lebanon. By his plan, such a withdrawal will provide Israel with the
support of the international community . . . [and enable eventually]
returning to Lebanon under better conditions. Whoever plans to go back
in will not argue over the exact border line and will not invest time
and resources in fortifying this border for only a month or two.

But Sharon isn't the one conducting this withdrawal. It is
Barak. Then, still, why wasn't the border fortified? There are two
options: either there has been a very big goof-up, or Barak is
executing, in practice, Sharon's plan. Under the first scenario, Barak
is determined to achieve peace, which can explain goof-ups here and
there. Although it is Barak who suggested in 1982, in a memo to
Sharon, to extend the Lebanon war to a comprehensive war with Syria,
he has come to his senses since then. In the second scenario, Barak is
the same Barak. Perhaps he believes that it is still possible to
realize Ben Gurion's vision according to which control of Southern
Lebanon is crucial for the future of Israel. Indeed the [Israeli]
public is tired of the price in casualties, but it will soon learn
that without Lebanon there cannot be quiet in the north. . . . Then
the spoiled public will learn that there is no choice -- we have to go
back to Lebanon. Yossi Sarid, at least, has been warning for months
that the road of unilateral withdrawal is leading, in fact, back into
Lebanon.

The problem is that we have no way to know what goes on in Barak's
mind, because he doesn't share his plans with others. Democracy or not
-- Barak is known to be a person who takes [makes?] his decisions by
himself. . . . At the security cabinet meeting last Monday, the
cabinet authorized Barak "to open fire whenever he sees fit," without
having to reconvene the cabinet. From that point on, our future
depends on whether Barak has changed. Is it the same Barak who wrote
Sharon in 1982 that it is possible to keep a very small number of
confidants who "know the full extent of the plan" . . . or is it a new
Barak, a peace-seeking democrat?

It's worth noting here that the PLO leaders involved in the "final
status" negotiations with Barak had objected to Israel's unilateral
withdrawal from Lebanon on the grounds that withdrawing without an
agreement would make it look like Hizbullah had been successful in
driving Israel out. Such a view, which became commonplace once the
Camp David talks failed and especially after the second Intifada
started, would reinforce the militant position that negotiation is
bound to fail and only a show of force can move Israel to recognize
Palestinian rights.

As it turns out, Israel did not soon reinvade Lebanon or attack
Syria. Most likely the main reason for this was that longtime Syrian
strong man Hafez Assad died two weeks after the withdrawal, leading
to his weaker and more moderate son Bashir Assad's rise to power.
Barak's two major peace initiatives -- negotiations first with
Syria then with the PLO -- both failed, with Barak offering less
than the UN resolutions required, then unilaterally pulling the
plug on further negotiations. Barak facilitated Sharon's notorious
demonstration at the Temple Mount, and his Chief of Staff, Shaul
Moffaz (later Sharon's Minister of Defense) reacted violently to
Palestinian demonstrations, igniting the Intifada. Barak lost the
election to his old boss and comrade Sharon, then before leaving
office withdrew all of his rejected peace offers, clearing the
way for Sharon's heavy-handed destruction of the PA and the last
shards of the Oslo Peace Process -- which, by the way, Barak had
opposed at its inception.

Still, by not settling with Lebanon and Syria, by building up
Hizbullah's reputation for driving Israel out, and by leaving the
border contested and vulnerable, Israel left the bomb that blew
up last week. Reinhart, writing in 2002, explains (pp. 86-87):

But one thing is clear: Barak insisted on keeping a small area of
conflict -- the Shaba Farms. This is a narrow fourteen-kilometer-long
and two-kilometer-wide strip near Mount Dov that Israel insists
belonged to Syria, and not to Lebanon, hence it would not withdraw
from this strip. (Both Syria and Lebanon deny this and delcare the
area is Lebanese and should be returned to Lebanon.) Hizbollah
continues, as might be expected, to fight over this strip of land,
demanding its liberation from Israeli occupation. This remains a
source of tension and potential incidents. The story now is that
Hizbollah, and Syria backing it, continues to threaten Israeli
existence, and a war with Syria may be inevitable. As we shall see in
Chapter IX, the Sharon administration is currently talking openly
about such a forthcoming war.

Barak's narrative still accompanies us day and night, like a
mantra, and shapes the collective perception of reality -- Israel's
generosity versus Arab rejectionism. It is frightening to observe how
successful this narrative has been. Those who believed the lies about
Barak's concessions despaired at the chance for peace. Since 1993
there has been a constant 60 percent majority in the polls supporting
"land for peace," including dismantling of Israeli settlements. (As
for the Golan Heights, we saw that in 1999, 60 percent of Jewish
Israel supported dismantling all settlements there.) After Camp
David and subsequent "negotiations," the support for peace with
concessions dropped in the polls to 30 percent regarding both the
Palestinian and Syrian fronts. Barak succeeded where Sharon had failed
before -- he convinced at least the middle third of Israelis that
peace with the Arab world is impossible, and that the coming conflicts
would be no-choice wars over Israel's very existence.

Indeed, we've seen periodic hostilities over the Shaba Farms strip,
which have been instrumental in Israel getting the US to put Hizbullah
on its list of terrorist organizations. That listing, as well as the
listing of Hamas, is a good part of the basis for Bush's unconditional
support of Israel in this round of wars. One may criticize Hizbullah
and Hamas for playing into Israel's hand, but we should be clear that
Israel has wanted these wars for a long time: they have been carefully
planned, and the plans have been executed without hardly any attention
to the situations that nominally triggered them.

The next big question is whether Israel will extend the war to
Syria. By blaming Syria both for Hamas and Hizbullah they have set
up a logic that would seem to make such an escalation inevitable --
certainly if Syria does anything the least bit provocative, and
perhaps in any case. On the other hand, the prospects there should
be sobering. Israel may have little trouble with the Syrian army,
but Syria would be if anything a more difficult country to occupy
than Lebanon proved to be. And while the Assad regime at this point
may be little missed in Syria, the probable successor is militant
Sunni Islamism. Sunnis have long chafed under rule by the secular
Baathists and the Assad family's Shia-leaning religious creed. A
militant Sunni Islamist Syria would abut Anbar province of Iraq,
which the US has had virtually no success in controlling, so the
net effect would be to double the resistance, joining Israel and
the US even more tightly as occupiers and oppressors.

The other culprit blamed for Israel's wars now is Iran, which
is tightly tied to Iraq's Shia militias -- not yet in open revolt
against the US given how busy they are killing Sunnis, but capable
of turning decisively against Bush in Iraq. So while Israel's wars
could provide cover for the US to launch its much planned, widely
leaked attack on Iran, the risks of such an opperation boggle the
mind. Of course, the wars could also provide cover for Israel to
launch its own attack -- a difficult logistical proposition, far
less likely of success than a US attack, and unlikely to provide
the US with any cover beyond the gullible US press.

The odds against these escalations only seem stiff because we
assume that sooner or later some shred of rationality has to prevail.
But it's hard to see evidence of sanity in what Israel and/or the US
have done recently.

KRS-One: Life (2006, Antagonist): Hip-hop nationalist,
a real patriot. Can't tell you how many times recently a line from one
of his old songs popped into my mind: "now, what the fuck am I supposed
to do?" A-

Jazz Prospecting (CG #10, Part 11)

Didn't make enough progress last week to feel certain that I'll
finish my Jazz Consumer Guide column this coming week. In particular,
the increase in what I've actually written is negligible. But in one
regard at least I've turned the corner: the number of closeout grades
on replay albums below (16) is roughly equal to the number of new
prospects (17). But even if this week doesn't do it, next one surely
will. Meanwhile, if you're reading these posts here, you already know
more than those who are waiting for the CG to appear in the Voice.

Gilbert Castellanos: Underground (2005 [2006],
Seedling): West coast (San Diego) trumpeter, originally from Mexico
(Guadalajara); plays in the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra; has
quite a bit of session work over the last 10-12 years, especially
behind singers. Hype sheet compares him to "two of his earliest
influences": Lee Morgan (one song covered here) and Clifford Brown.
Doesn't sound a lot like either to me, although a cross isn't out
of the question. Plays on their home court, mainstream hard bop.
If that's your thing, I imagine you'd enjoy him live, and might
even want this skillfully played, thoroughly enjoyable record as
a souvenir.
B+(**)

Fred Wesley & the Swing'N Jazz All-Stars: It Don't Mean
a Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing (2005 [2006], Sons of
Sound): This is sponsored by or a benefit for something called The
Commission Project, which has something to do with golf, which has
something to do with swing, which brings us around to Ellington,
who always dug trombonists, which leads us to Wesley, who got his
name listed first because he's the only All-Star here you might
have heard of unless you're on the Sons of Sound mailing list.
Wesley actually only plays on seven cuts here, but nobody plays
on all eleven -- Marvin Stamm comes closest at nine. The other
All-Stars are: Carl Atkins, Mike Holober, Bob Sneider, Keter Betts,
Jay Leonhart, Akira Tana and Rich Thompson. One's a bass duet. Nice
record, but can't say it means much even if it swings a little.
B+(*)

Will Holshouser Trio: Singing to a Bee (2004 [2006],
Clean Feed): Plays accordion, with Ron Horton on trumpet and David
Phillips on bass. The trumpet stands out starkly against accordion,
especially when Horton goes high. The bass, however, burrows under,
with little presence on its own -- seems like drums might have been
more useful. Touches of Weill seem inevitable, but nothing connects
with tango or klezmer -- Holshouser also plays with David Krakauer's
Klezmer Madness, but what's lacking on all fronts is momentum. (One
more gripe: Clean Feed, following Palmetto and others, has started
to only send out promo sleeves. I don't grade down for this, but do
find it annoying. I did manage to read the liner notes online --
something about haiku that made no sense to me -- but can't comment
on the real packaging.)
B

Free Range Rat: Nut Club (1999 [2006], Clean Feed):
Starts chaotic. I've never been a fan of what Impulse used to define
as "energy music" -- cacophony is the more normative term -- but
once in a while something interesting emerges from it, and that's
what more or less happens here. As far as I can tell -- another
skinny promo disc -- Free Range Rat started as a trumpet-sax duo,
John Carlson and Eric Hipp, respectively. Then they added bass,
Shawn McGloin, then drums, George Schuller, for one of those free
pianoless quartets, although a relatively messy one. This record
also has Doug Yates, clarinet and bass clarinet, listed as "special
guest."
B+(**)

"Killer" Ray Appleton/Melvin Rhyne: Latin Dreams
(2004 [2006], Lineage): You know the dreams are Latin because you
can hear Milton Cardona's congas. Leave them out, and maybe skip
the shot of "Tequila," and you get a standard Hammond B3 trio:
Rhyne's organ, Appleton's drums, and Ilya Lushtak's guitar. The
only name I recognize here is Rhyne, who cut his first album in
1960 when this style was taking shape. He's made a comeback since
1993, as has the genre. The latter seems slight by definition, but
this album is as thoroughly enjoyable as any organ grind I've run
across in the last decade or so. Drummer and guitarist are a big
part of this, and the congas are all the innovation these guys
need, or want.
[B+(***)]

Hank Jones/Frank Wess: Hank and Frank (2003 [2006],
Lineage): From the label website: "Each Lineage recording is an
organic collaboration of living legends and the strongest and most
exciting young performers, created in order to perpetuate the
timeless straight-ahead jazz aesthetic." The young performers
list starts with guitarist Ilya Lushtak -- Russian born, grew up
in San Francisco, moved to New York in 1996, 30 years old when his
website bio was written -- who runs the label and arranges these
collaborations. Jones and Wess, of course, are near the top of
anyone's living legends list, and anything that lets them keep
on recording is fine by me. Nothing new here, except that Lushtak
continues to please as a sideman. Wess plays flute on a couple of
tunes, but few people sound better on tenor sax, so that's what
stands out.
B+(**)

Ignacio Berroa: Codes (2005 [2006], Blue Note): Cuban
drummer, moved to New York in 1980, working with Dizzy Gillespie for a
decade. He's done quite a bit of session work over the last 25 years,
but this is his first album, produced by Gonzalo Rubalcaba. The rhythm
pieces jump out at you first, but there are quieter spots, where piano
by Rubalcaba or Ed Simon and/or sax by David Sanchez or Felipe LaMoglia
come to the fore. Impressive work. Need to spend more time with it.
[A-]

Cassandra Wilson: Thunderbird (2006, Blue Note): Don't
know what to make of her. My first encounter was when she was part of
New Air and, as best I recall, married to Henry Threadgill -- something
you don't read about much any more. (Wikipedia mentions it using past
tense under Threadgill, but not under Wilson.) Before that she worked
with Steve Coleman and M-Base. She's recorded albums under her own name
for JMT from 1985 and Blue Note from 1993. I've heard three before this
one -- a small sample I have no real feelings about. She has one of
those deep, dusky voices that form a line from Sarah Vaughan through
Betty Carter and Abbey Lincoln, although I can't say that she's ever
done much with it. (I'm not a big fan of the other three either, but
with Vaughan and Carter at least I have a pretty good idea why others
are big fans; Lincoln is as big a mystery to me as Wilson.) This album,
produced by T Bone Burnett, fits poorly within any known jazz tradition.
Half originals written with studio hands, mostly Keefus Ciancia; half
the sort of songs Burnett tends to find. The only one I like much is
a slow "Red River Valley" done with nothing more than Colin Linden's
guitar. Don't dislike any of it, but don't get it either.
B

Bob Reynolds: Can't Wait for Perfect (2005 [2006],
Fresh Sound New Talent): Young saxophonist, mostly tenor but one cut
on soprano, graduated summa cum laude at Berklee, so his disavowal
of perfectionism may have come harder than for most. He fits pretty
tightly into a set of mainstream saxophonists like Bob Berg, Benny
Wallace, Steve Grossman, Bob Rockwell -- a rich, full-bodied tone
that suggests that's what tenor sax was always meant to sound like,
a taste for music that's neither old nor new but something hoping
for timeless, plenty of chops that rarely get stressed. No doubt he's
a tremendous student. Not sure yet where else he's going.
[B+(***)]

Sergi Sirvent/Santi Careta: Anacrònics (2005 [2006],
Fresh Sound New Talent): Sirvent is a pianist who impressed me every
time out, even though I've yet to fall hard for one of his albums.
The best to date is filed under Unexpected and called Plays the
Blues in Need, and that's in my draft as an honorable mention.
That album plays off Monk, so it makes sense that the best of these
duets is the one where Sirvent runs away with "In Walked Bud." Lots
of standards here, a nice range of pieces, effectively character
sketches for the pianist. Careta is a guitarist and less assertive.
Don't have much feel for him, but he has another album on the shelf.
B+(*)

Esperanza Spalding: Junjo (2005 [2006], Ayva):
Quite a name. She comes from Portland OR, is barely old enough to
legally drink, plays bass, sings, and composed all or parts of four
of nine songs here. Well, sings is kind of a stretch: she reminds
me more of Keith Jarrett than Sarah Vaughan, although she's a good
deal more artful at scatting along than Jarrett is. The record's
a trio, with Aruán Ortiz on piano and Francisco Mela on drums, but
like all good bassist-leaders she gets the benefit of the mix. Nice
debut. Could pick up another star if I left it open and worked on
it.
B+(*)

Wayne Horvitz Gravitas Quartet: Way Out East (2005
[2006], Songlines): This sounded horrible at first then started
to kick in, rather strangely. The lineup has no bottom, no beat,
no propulsion: the leader's piano, Peggy Lee's cello, Ron Miles'
trumpet, and Sara Schoenbeck's bassoon. It has a studied, rather
stately chamber music feel, appealing in a rather abstract way.
[B+(*)]

Kris Davis: The Slightest Shift (2005 [2006],
Fresh Sound New Talent): Canadian pianist, migrated from Vancouver
to Toronto to New York. I liked her first record, Lifespan,
enough to list it as an Honorable Mention. This one pares the group
down from six to four, losing two extra horns while keeping the
critical one, Tony Malaby's tenor sax. Malaby is remarkably adept
at sliding into groups and complementing but not upstaging the
leader. Davis wrote all the pieces, working dense piano breaks
into the mix. A good example of the left bank of the postbop
mainstream.
B+(***)

Jeremy Udden: Torchsongs (2003-05 [2006], Fresh
Sound New Talent): Plays soprano and alto sax, leading off with
soprano here. Credits include work with Either/Orchestra and Jazz
Composer's Alliance Orchestra. Studies include Steve Lacy, whose
"Blinks" is the only non-original here; Bob Brookmeyer, who guests
on two tracks, including a duet; and the inevitable, ubiquitous
George Garzone. I often fret when I see a long list of credits --
ten names here -- but this breaks down to two sessions, with most
cuts at quartet or less, but three cuts with six or seven show a
good deal of skill at knitting the sound together than a minimum
of clutter. Among the sidemen, guitarist Ben Monder stands out.
B+(**)

Fred Lonberg-Holm Quartet: Bridges Freeze Before Roads
(2001 [2006], Longbox): The leader is based on Chicago, plays cello,
has done some interesting things -- I particularly like a 2005 album
called Other Valentines. Most recently he's replaced trombonist
Jeb Bishop in the Vandermark Five. This just appeared but dates back
a few years. The quartet includes Guillermo Gregorio on clarinet,
Jason Roebke on bass, and Glenn Kotche on percussion. The music is
dense and viscous -- it doesn't move so much as it seeps. Interest
is minimal, mostly as dull background din.
B-

Laszlo Gardony: Natural Instinct (2006, Sunnyside):
Hungarian pianist, emigrated to US in 1983, has seven albums listed
at AMG, which probably short-changes his early work. This is a trio
with bassist John Lockwood and drummer Yoron Israel. Soft and sweet,
worth listening to but not the sort of thing that demands you pay
attention.
B+(*)

The Chris Walden Big Band: No Bounds (2005 [2006],
Origin): I can't help but admire someone who these days can still
conceive of big band jazz on such a grossly ludicrous scale. How
big are we talking? Well, he's got four French horns to work with.
Five cellos. Admittedly, only one harp. I also have to say that
singer Tierney Sutton is a plus on her feature -- as long as she
sings, everything else just sort of blurs into the ghost of Billy
May. In general, the orchestration isn't bad, but it's something
to worry about when your best themes come from Walt Disney. Not
even Sun Ra could make that work.
C+

And these are final grades/notes on records I put back for further
listening the first time around.

Batagraf: Statements (2003-04 [2006], ECM): Samples of
unknown media announcers, something in Wolof, Sidsel Endresen uttering
words like "blowback" and "softworks" and reminding us that there are
things we don't know we don't know. The music is mostly percussion,
with Frode Nymo's alto sax and Arve Henriksen's trumpet making brief
appearances for emphasis. Leader Jon Balke remains inconspicuous on
keyboards. There's little flow, but a barren fractured soundscape.
B+(***)

Chick Corea: The Ultimate Adventure (2006, Stretch):
I don't know, and couldn't care less, what this has to do with L. Ron
Hubbard, who wrote a book under the same title. But as a fusion album
this at least covers the basics: the sine qua non is groove, which
this delivers in spades -- first two cuts are impressive enough in
that regard I began to think this might amount to something. If this
doesn't quite pan out, the reasons are the usual ones: the change of
pace brings out the cheesiness in the keyboards and the choice of
wind instruments leans strongly toward the flutes. Corea's previous
Hubbard tribute, To the Stars, was a dud. This one isn't.
B

Jason Kao Hwang: Edge (2005 [2006], Asian Improv):
Hwang has been around a while -- his CV doesn't give a birth date,
but dates back to 1975 at NYU, so I figure he's closing in on 50 --
but he's only emerged as a major jazz violinist in the last few
years. Although he was born in the US, he seems to have spent much
of his career exploring Chinese classical music. Most of his jazz
work incorporates typical Chinese tones and rhythms, but I wonder
whether a blindfold test would peg the Chinese influence here. Good
quartet here with Taylor Ho Bynum on cornet, Ken Filiano on bass,
and Andrew Drury on drums. His previous Asian Improv record,
Graphic Evidence, was more distinctly Asian, while his record
with William Hooker and Roy Campbell as the Gift pushed much harder
into avant terrain. This is somewhere in between.
B+(**)

Conjure: Bad Mouth (2005 [2006], American Clavé,
2CD): Long after two '80s albums, this is a third installment of
Ishmael Reed texts channeled through Kip Hanrahan's music played
by an impressive roster of musicians. The first, Music for the
Texts of Ishmael Reed is highly recommended; the second, Cab
Calloway Stands in the for Moon much less so. This one comes
in between. Reed's spoken pieces hold your interest more than the
more song-like ones, which suggests that the music isn't quite up
to snuff. What should be an all-star set of Latino percussionists --
Robby Ameen, Horacio El Negro Hernandez, Dafnis Prieto, Richie Flores,
Pedro Martinez -- don't kick up much of a fuss, and I'm still not
sure what Billy Bang does here. But the only holdover from the '80s
group does loom large, and when he breaks David Murray steals the
album.
B+(**)

Kip Hanrahan: Every Child Is Born a Poet: The Life &
Work of Piri Thomas (1992-2002 [2006], American Clavé):
Effectively this does for Thomas -- author of Down These Mean
Streets, perhaps America's best known Puerto Rican writer --
what Conjure does for Ishmael Reed. The words are more prosaic,
but the narration has palpable impact. However, the music, meant
for a soundtrack, has less impact -- a little trumpet, but it's
mostly the Latin percussionists who save the day.
B+(*)

Liquid Soul: One-Two Punch (2006, Telarc): Mars
Williams learned his craft under legendary Chicago avant-gardist
Hal Russell. After Russell died, Williams recruited Ken Vandermark
to fill Russell's shoes in the NRG Ensemble. Vandermark reciprocated
by inviting Williams into the first edition of the Vandermark Five.
When acid jazz came around, Williams split off to form Liquid Soul
with synth programmer Van Christie, and they've been plugging away
at it for a decade now, with generally indifferent results. This
one at least packs a punch, and even builds to a noise crescendo
at the end, showing that Williams hasn't forgotten what NRG was
all about. Formally, this is still pop jazz, spliced together from
undocumented sessions with a long list of minor collaborators --
the only one with any real jazz cred is Hugh Ragin.
B+(**)

François Carrier: Happening (2005 [2006], Leo, 2CD):
A French Canadian alto saxist, Carrier first impressed me with a live
trio album, Play, which did just that: tight, edgy, robust,
exhilarating, but the sort of thing that other people could do if
that was all they wanted. That same trio is the core of this album
five years later -- Pierre Coté on bass and Michel Lambert on drums --
and they've grown even more telepathic, but Carrier has moved onto a
broader sonic canvas by adding two more musicians. Uwe Neumann is a
specialist in Indian music, playing sitar, sanza, and Indian talking
drum. He is the backbone of these improvisations, the exotic center
around which everyone else revolves. Mat Maneri plays viola, which
vies with Carrier's saxes -- he plays soprano as well as alto -- as
a second lead instrument. The liner notes talk about microtonalities
in Indian music -- I don't quite get how that plays out, but recall
that Maneri's father has long been noted for his microtonal work.
What I am sure of is that the five long improvised happenings here
never flag or lose interest.
A-

Grismore/Scea Group: Well Behaved Fish (2004 [2006],
Accurate): Steve Grismore plays guitar. Paul Scea plays various saxes
and flutes. They open with Ornette Coleman's "Dancing in Your Head,"
which presumably frames their interests -- certainly fits their
instruments. Fun to hear that piece again, but none of their own
works move Coleman forward. Rather, they move toward a fairly
generic but spirited fusion, even keeping trumpeter Brent Sandy
on hand for those little Milesian riffs.
B+(*)

Gnappy: Unloaded (2006, Bean Pie): Jazz-funk group
from Austin TX, basically a sax-guitar-bass-drums quartet with a
wee bit of vocals, including a rap, plus some guests. I go up and
down on them -- means they can prick my interest, but have trouble
sustaining it.
B

Skerik's Syncopated Taint Septet: Husky (2004 [2006],
Hyena): The group breakdown is three reeds, two brass, Hammond, and
drums, with little or no electronics. The horns rarely break loose,
so the effect is long on groove with thick harmonics, much less so
on beat. I like most of what I've heard from Skerik -- think he has
the potential to cross both ways; like his analysis and instincts.
But when he calls one song "Go to Hell, Mr. Bush" -- the honorific
blunted a punch that should have landed harder.
B+(*)

Dafnis Prieto: Absolute Quintet (2005 [2006], Zoho):
Cuban percussionist, made it to New York in 1999, and and ever since
then folks who presumably know about such things have been raving
about him. I've heard him as a sideman on half a dozen albums, and
more often than not I've been impressed too. But I didn't like his
previous album, About the Monks, and I don't much like this
one either, although it's easier here to hear what his fans hear in
him. For one thing, his knowledge of Cuban music is encyclopedic,
but his ambitions are such that he tries to show it all off. One
choice cut is "The Stutterer" -- amazingly jerky percussion, real
strong sax blast from Yosvany Terry. That's followed by "Afrotango,"
more or less self-explanatory, with a nice Henry Threadgill guest
appearance. But then he delves into Spanish classicism on "One Day
Suite" and loses me.
B+(*)

Yosvany Terry Cabrera: Metamorphosis (2004 [2005],
Ewe): Afro-Cuban saxophonist, usually goes under name Yosvany Terry.
Record doesn't specify which when where -- alto seems to be his main
horn, but I've also seen him play tenor and soprano, and he probably
uses all three here. Avishai Cohen plays trumpet for a contrasting
horn, Mike Moreno plays some nifty guitar, and the usual suspects --
Luis Perdomo, Hans Glawishnig, Dafnis Prieto, Pedro Martinez -- keep
the complex riddims bumping and grinding.
B+(**)

Jason Rigby: Translucent Space (2005 [2006], Fresh
Sound New Talent): A relatively large group here, with Rigby playing
tenor, soprano and alto saxes, bass clarinet and wood flute. Still,
it rarely feels cluttered -- don't have a track-by-track breakdown,
but it may be that the two clarinets, flute, trumpet, and for that
matter cello, are sparsely used. Mike Holober's Fender electric piano
does get a good deal of use, and is a plus here.
B+(**)

Ben Adams Quintet: Old Thoughts for a New Day
(2005 [2006], Lunar Module): Vibraphonist, seems to be a Kansas
boy -- received the "Kansas State Outstanding Percussion Award"
four consecutive years, before moving on to Berklee (Gary Burton)
and currently, well, somewhere near San Francisco. Quintet has
two horns -- Erik Jekabson on trumpet, Mitch Marcus on tenor
sax -- both of which have some bite to their solos. I'm less
clear on the vibes -- harder to hook onto them, but many points
catch one's attention.
B+(*)

John Tchicai/Charlie Kohlhase/Garrison Fewell: Good Night
Songs (2003 [2006], Boxholder, 2CD): Two reed players --
Tchicai plays tenor sax and bas clarinet, Kohlhase plays tenor,
alto and baritone sax -- and a guitarist. The effect, maybe even
the concept, is like a toned-down, spaced-out variation on the
Sonny Simmons-Michael Marcus trios -- the horns more polite, which
doesn't mean less interesting, the rhythm folded in rather than
popping out.
B+(**)

Bush, the Saudis, and Israel

I've finished reading Ron Suskind's book, The One Percent
Doctrine. The book basically tracks the War on Terror from the
viewpoint of sources in the CIA -- George Tenet is the more/less
tragic hero of the story, and evidently a major source. I'll have
more to say on this, including various sections I marked, in a
later post. For now I just want to start with a couple of quotes
that involve Bush's Israel policy. They are especially noteworthy
these days.

The first quote is background for an April 2002 meeting between
Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah and Bush in Crawford
(pp. 104-105):

Relations between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United States
were in tatters. The Saudis had been stewing for more than a year, in
fact, ever since it became clear at the start of 2001 that this
administration was to alter the long-standing U.S. role of honest
broker in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to something less than
that. The President, in fact, had said in the first NSC principals
meeting of his administration that Clinton had overreached at the end
of his second term, bending too much toward Yasser Arafat -- who then
broke off productive Camp David negotiations at the final moment --
and that "We're going to tilt back ward Israel." Powell, a chair away
in the Situation Room that day, said such a move would reverse thirty
years of U.S. policy, and that it could unleash the new prime
minister, Ariel Sharon, and the Israeli army in ways that could be
dire for the Palestinians. Bush's response: "Sometimes a show of force
by one side can really clarify things."

This faith in the clarifying power of force has long since become
a Bush trademark, and seems more than anything else to be the common
bond between the Bush and Sharon/Olmert regimes. It's noteworthy that
this was Bush's attitude before Sharon took office and sent the IDF
into Palestinian territories seeking not just to crush the Intifada
but to dismantle the Palestinian Authority and the last vestiges of
the Oslo Peace Process. In other words, Bush gave Sharon the green
light, and he did it precisely because he believed that Israel should
use such force.

Suskind then goes into some background on the US-Saudi relationship,
which I won't bother quoting, not least because it's rather off base.
This then leads to the relationship between the Saudis and the first
President Bush, leading up to a dinner with Bush and Prince Bandar,
Saudi Arabia's long-time ambassador to the US, and consequently to
the relationship of Bush père et fils (pp. 106-107):

The discussion between the elder Bush and the Saudi princes was
wistful, largely about a world washed away by 9/11, and also a
generational passage. Privately, the current President had railed
against his father's alliances, and his mistakes. Living, and leading,
in reaction to his namesake was a guiding principle. In a defense of
his tilting toward Israel, for example, Bush told an old foreign
policy hand, "I'm not going to be supportive of my father and all his
Arab buddies!"

Next up was a dinner meeting with Abdullah and a rather passive,
noncommittal Cheney. Finally, the meeting with Bush at Crawford
(pp. 109-111):

The Saudis had specific demands. Abdullah had recently offered his
own peace plan: a two-state solution, a recognition of Israel by the
Arab world -- and, also a nonstarter about the return to the 1967
borders, leaving East Jerusalem as the capital of a new Arab state,
and a host of things he expected in terms of the crisis on the West
Bank. The United States, now deep into the "war on terror," had its
own set of issues. Though Saudi Arabia was home to fifteen of the
nineteen hijackers -- and to bin Laden -- the kingdom was being less
than cooperative, barring the United States from interviewing the
families of the hijackers and blocking efforts to trace terror
finance, most of which tracked through the country's labyrinth of
charities and hawalas. First, though, the Saudi started on their list
-- a long one, which included the United States distancing itself from
Sharon, and acts that would support the Palestinians.

Bush listened, but not really. This was not where he wanted to
be. He was marking time. "Let's go for a drive," he said to Abdullah,
after a few minutes. "Just you and me. I'll show you the ranch."

And they marched off, in midsentence, to Bush's pickup truck,
leaving behind a phalanx of slack-jawed advisers with what one later
called "monarchy blues" -- a realization, as he described it, that
ideals of representative government fade at moments like this into a
feeling that things haven't changed all tha tmuch since foreign
affairs were the affairs of kings -- how they got along, or didn't,
determined the fate of nations."

Bouncing in the cab of the Chevy pickup -- Bush, wearing a suit and
tie for the visit of a foreign leader, Abdullah in a tweed jacket over
his gown -- they seemed to get along just fine. Bush loves doing this:
showing the 1,600-acre ranch, cutting this way and that over the
central Texas scrub in teh pickup, making snap decisions on which path
to take, where to go first, and last. There are seventeen varieties of
trees. He pointed them out, told Abdullah of his love of the land, his
desire for peace. They stopped and talked at one of Bush's favortite
spots. They saw a wild turkey.

Then, after an hour or so, they were back for lunch. And everyone
settled at a long table on the glassed-in porch -- Colin, Condi, Andy
Card, Cheney, Bandar, Bush, Saud, Abdullah, and Jordan -- and Bush
asked Abdullah if he could say a prayer. Abdullah nodded, and Bush
prayed, and then they ate beef tenderloin and potato salad, brownies
and ice cream.

Abdullah, dabbing his lips, snapped to attention as the brownies
were cleared -- as though he'd lost track of what had brought him here
-- as did Bandar and Saud. They had eight items on their list. They
needed deliverables -- something to bring back to the roiling Gulf
that would ease the Arab world. Would Bush back up his words with
actions? Was he on Sharon's side, or was the United States still
interested in supporting its Arab friends? Was America any longer the
region's honest broker?

But the discussions could get no traction. The Saudis wanted
pressure on Sharon to release Arafat from confinement in
Ramallah. Saud went over possible steps the United States could
take. Bush stared blankly at them. They went down the items. Sometimes
the President nodded, as though something sounded reasonable, but he
fofered little response.

And, after almost an hour of this, the Saudis, looking a bit
perplexed, got up to go. It was as though Bush had never read the
packet they sent over to the White House in preparation for this
meeeting: a terse, lean document, just a few pages, listing the
Saudis' demands and an array of options that the President might
consider. After the meeting, a few attendees on the American team
wondered why the President seemed to have no idea what the Saudis were
after, and why he didn't bother to answer their concerns or get any
concessions from them, either, on the "war on terror." There was not a
more important conversation in the "war on terror" than a sit-down
with Saudi Arabia. Several of the attendees checked into what had
happened.

The Saudi packet, they found, had been diverted to Dick Cheney's
office. The President never got it, never read it. In what may have
been the most important, and contentious, foreign policy meeting of
his presidency, George W. Bush was unaware of what the Saudis hoped to
achieve in traveling to Crawford.

Suskind errs in referring to the Saudi peace plan as a nonstarter.
The border alignments the Saudis proposed are precisely those mandated
by UN Security Council resolutions following the 1967 war. Those are
the basis of the international law that governs resolution of the war,
and nothing has changed in that regard. Helena Cobban has a good
summary of this in a recent
post
that also covers how international law applies to the recent
escalation of hostilities. Her key points bear repeating here:

But the bigger question here, in my mind, is that all these
conflicts have now gone on so long, and have so many very tangled
sub-themes and potential triggers for escalation by either side, that
surely it is time to get the whole darned conflict between Israel and
neighbors finally resolved. That means the Palestinian-Israeli
conflict, the Syrian-Israeli conflict, and the Lebanese-Israeli
conflict.

This is indeed do-able. If it is done, basically, on the basis of
international law, then nearly all the parties to the conflict know
what this is and are ready to go ahead and do such a deal. On the Arab
side, all the Arab governments have signed onto the Beirut Declaration
of 2002 -- and the most recent Hamas-Fateh agreement then endorsed all
its main points.

The only party that is not basically ready to resolve the conflict
on the basis of international law -- that is, with Israel withdrawing
from just about all of the land it captured in the 1967 war -- is that
portion of the Israeli public that still clings to the chauvinistic
dream of a Jewish Greater Jerusalem that stretches from the Old City
just about right down to the Jordan River . . . an outcome that would
be unacceptable to the Palestinians in two major ways: it denies any
meaningful Palestinian role or presence in Jerusalem, and it slices a
huge wedge out of the West Bank, dividing what remains potentially for
use by a Palestinian state into two.

The Beirut Declaration of 2002 referred to here is Abdullah's plan --
the same one he presented to Bush. So Cobban is slightly wrong here:
Israel is not the only party opposed to so simple, straightforward, and
obvious a deal. Bush is another party opposed. Or perhaps we should
say Cheney is the one opposed, since he was the one who trashed the
plan. Bush merely lacked the attention span of one of those turkeys
he enjoys pointing out -- and by not caring, not understanding, by
his ignorance and his gut faith in the clarifying power of force, he
missed an opportunity that could have set the US in a far superior
position in the Middle East, establishing a bit of credibility he
sure could have used in Iraq. Instead, we've since seen what comes
of his alliance with Israel, of his commitment to force and against
justice.

Buddies to the End

It's becoming inreasingly obvious that the answer to the question
of why Bush invaded Iraq is all of the above. The two most fervently
denied rationales were "for the oil" and "for Israel" -- I've gone
over the oil case recently, and now Israel is making the latter case
largely on their own. Our reluctance to buy these rationales stems
mostly from their foolishness. One assumes, for instance, that a war
for oil should benefit gas guzzling customers, but the most common
effect of war is to disrupt supplies, driving up prices, and that's
exactly what has happened. One also assumes that Israelies would
benefit most from peace and stability, which US war in Iraq works
against. The poisoned atmosphere in Iraq may not have, strictly
speaking, caused the military breakout in Gaza and Lebanon, but
it contributed in a big way, both by increasing Arab distrust of
the US and the West and by letting the IDF think they can get away
with such aggression. Indeed, Israel's propagandists have rushed
to point out how Israel has joined the US side-by-side in the War
on Terror. For instance, William Kristol in Weekly Standard:

Radical Islamism isn't going away anytime soon. But it will make a
big difference how strong the state sponsors, harborers, and
financiers of radical Islamism are. Thus, our focus should be less on
Hamas and Hezbollah, and more on their paymasters and real
commanders--Syria and Iran. And our focus should be not only on the
regional war in the Middle East, but also on the global struggle
against radical Islamism.

For while Syria and Iran are enemies of Israel, they are also
enemies of the United States. We have done a poor job of standing up
to them and weakening them. They are now testing us more boldly than
one would have thought possible a few years ago. Weakness is
provocative. We have been too weak, and have allowed ourselves to be
perceived as weak.

The right response is renewed strength--in supporting the
governments of Iraq and Afghanistan, in standing with Israel, and in
pursuing regime change in Syria and Iran. For that matter, we might
consider countering this act of Iranian aggression with a military
strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Why wait? Does anyone think
a nuclear Iran can be contained? That the current regime will
negotiate in good faith? It would be easier to act sooner rather than
later. Yes, there would be repercussions--and they would be healthy
ones, showing a strong America that has rejected further
appeasement.

But such a military strike would take a while to organize. In the
meantime, perhaps President Bush can fly from the silly G8 summit in
St. Petersburg -- a summit that will most likely convey a message of
moral confusion and political indecision -- to Jerusalem, the capital
of a nation that stands with us, and is willing to fight with us,
against our common enemies. This is our war, too.

Kristol is right about one thing: that Israel's attacks on Gaza and
Lebanon are our war. The Cheney Administration committed itself to just
this sort of war when they put Hamas and Hizbullah on their terrorist
enemies list. Neither decision was obvious. Neither group was affiliated
with Al Qaeda or directed against the US. Both had substantial public
legitimacy for their resistance to Israel. A much smarter war on terror
would have sought to isolate Al Qaeda rather than group them with much
more popular organizations. In doing so, the US adopted Israel's cause
as its own, and ceded definition of what that alliance would mean to
Israel itself -- we wrote them blank checks, which now they have started
to cash.

The futility of this ostensible war against radical Islamism should
be obvious. We know from vast experience that war drives most people
to resistance, and that war promotes extremist leaders over moderate
ones. We know that every war in Muslim lands has driven people to
Islam and driven Islam to greater extremes. It is madness to think
that the US and/or Israel can win by lopping off the extremist fringe
of Islam. War itself creates and expands that fringe, so the only
logical definition of success in such a war is genocide. Is that
what even Bush and Olmert really want to stake their success on?

The thing to realize here is that these wars -- the US one in
Iraq, the Israeli one in Gaza and Lebanon -- are the logical, almost
inevitable, consequences of bad decisions made and casually accepted
without understanding their consequences. Because the US failed to
press Israel for peace and justice, the US invaded Iraq with the
spectre of Israel's occupation on its back. Because the US failed to
see any difference between Al Qaeda's terrorist attacks against the
US and the resistance of Hizbullah and Hamas to Israeli occupation,
we became partners in that occupation. Because the US repeatedly
clung to its alliance with Israel regardless of what Israelis did,
the US surrendered its ability to make its own policy. Whether that
means that the US will follow Kristol's logic into bombing Iran is
another piece of madness that remains to be seen. But expecting
either Bush or Olmert to wise up at this point is more optimism
than either's recent history justifies.

Death in Gaza

The Peace and Social Justice Center here in Wichita put on a film
tonight called Death in Gaza. It had been scheduled for several
weeks, but events conspired to bring out a crowd of 20-25 people. What
we saw was based on work by James Miller, a British filmmaker who had
the idea of focusing both on Palestinian and Israeli children to see
how the conflict passes on to future generations. This was shot in
2003, when the second Intifada was still pretty hot and Sharon was
pretty heavy-handed in putting it down. Miller didn't get very far:
after some rough action in Nablus he went to Rafah at the southern
end of Gaza, where he was killed by an Israeli soldier. He never
went on to film the Israeli end of the equation, and the film was
restructured around his death. It provides a gritty and sometimes
gory view, probably quite representative of how Israel's tanks and
bulldozers look to Palestinians caught in their grip. The interviews
with militants and children reflect this reality -- the juxtaposition
of naive adolescent charms and intense hatred for Israel is jarring,
and that seems to be the point.

Not that it's much of a point: you can read it however you like,
either as an example of how war and injustice derails lives, or as
evidence that Palestinian hatred of Israel is culturally endemic,
something that Israel can never afford to let down its guard against.
My own view is that the point itself is misguided -- is in fact a
rather common but confused misreading of the situation. The point
argues that the conflict is rooted in the deep-seated hatred that
both sides have for each other. Given how hate perpetuates itself
through self-righteous acts of violence, this idea leaves us with
a conflict that just goes on and on, something we are powerless to
halt. Rather, I think it's clear that the conflict is above all a
political power struggle, and hatred is just a side-effect of the
injuries inflicted. To end the struggle all you need is some kind
of mutually accepted equilibrium -- some understanding with enough
positive value for both sides that acceptance would be preferable
to continuing the fight. Once that happens, you stop feeding the
hatred, the scars heal over, and normal life begins.

That hasn't happened for lots of reasons, but the most important
one to bear in mind is that the power struggle has become extremely
asymmetrical. Israel enjoys overwhelming power yet still cannot be
satisfied. On the other hand, no matter how badly Israel beats them,
many Palestinians are unwilling to give up their defiance. At its
most extreme, we see this in suicide missions, acts that transform
defeat into a form Israel finds unpalatable. Had Miller finished his
plan, he wouldn't have had trouble finding hatred on Israel's side
of the fence, but the hatred would have been as asymmetrical as the
power struggle. Israeli hatred of Palestinians, regardless of how
vicious it gets, is closer to what we call bigotry. It is a luxury
of the powerful to look down on the powerless. Palestinian hatred of
Israelis is wrapped up in the desperate, righteous indignation of
their victimhood. Not that it plays out so cleanly -- thanks largely
to Herr Hitler, who was very fond of the idea of shipping Europe's
Jews off to some other continent before he opted for a more final
solution, Israelis have tried with much success to corner the market
on victimhood, while the Palestinians have become adept at mirroring
their oppressors.

We should know by now that human beings are quite capable of
forgiving or at least forgetting those who trespassed against them,
but only once that trespass is safely in the past. Because of the
power asymmetry, that can't be until Israel wills it to happen, and
Israel appears to have remarkably little interest in doing so. I'm
reminded of Faulkner's quip about the South's constant rehashing of
the Civil War: "The past is not dead. In fact, it's not even past."
The South's obsession with its past prolonged America's civil rights
struggle by more than a century. Israel's unwillingness to so much
as meet with Arabs it has wronged in the past looks like a similar
preference for the past over the future. Given that the past Israel
clings to has been so tragic, the future looks no different.

Israel's Real and Imagined Wars

Regardless of what you thought about Zionist goals and practices,
Israel used to enjoy a reputation for competency. Their 1948 War of
Independence was fought with brutal efficiency and skillful diplomacy.
On the diplomatic front they managed to get an initial UN sanction,
conveniently dispense with the part about partition borders, and fend
off every subsequent attempt by the UN and/or the US to come up with
a more equitable solution. They managed to panic most of the local
Palestinian population into exile, then locked down those borders
causing a permanent refugee crisis. They exploited several ceasefires
for military advantage. They managed the propaganda front adroitly,
gaining critical support from first the Soviet Union, then France,
then finally the US -- where they always enjoyed critical popular
support. They knew exactly what they intended to do in the Seven
Day War of 1967, first disabling Egypt's air force, then Syria's;
quickly invading the Sinai to the Suez Canal, then the West Bank,
then mopping up the Syrian Heights.

However, they failed to parlay their 1967 success into a stable
peace. To turn Abba Eban's quip on its head -- a much more accurate
formulation -- after 1967 Israel never missed an opportunity to miss
an opportunity for peace. They almost immediately defied the UN by
annexing East Jerusalem, which meant that they never again had the
world body behind them. The Wars of Attrition with Egypt and the
1973 war with Egypt and Syria were messy stalemates. Asymetrical
warfare with Palestinians in exile took a toll even when Israel
appeared to have scored. Their interference in Lebanon turned into
a long, bloody, hopeless occupation. Their military occupation of
the West Bank and Gaza was competent and judicious at first, but
that deteriorated over time, especially under pressure from the
settler movement, until the Occupied Territories erupted in the
Intifada. The whole Oslo Peace Process was effectively sabotaged
within Israel, leading to its eventual breakdown and a second
Intifada much more violent than the first. Israel's military and
security arms still act as boldly as ever, but they've lost their
ability to gauge consequences and manage appearances.

Nor did this breakdown in competency limit itself to matters of
peace. In its early days, Israel, at least for the Jews, was a
tightly bound socialist nation, with a sense of common purpose,
equality, and strong mutual support organizations. Back then Israel
was famed for making the desert flower. All that has slipped away
as well. Israel still has a first-world standard of living, but it
is dependent on US subsidies, both private and public, and decades
of right-wing government have led to the same sort of inequality
we enjoy or suffer from in the US.

Still, Israeli incompetency has rarely been so blatant as what
we've seen in the last couple of weeks. I don't have time to rehearse
the whole series of events, but the main line is: Hamas declared a
truce and maintained it for 18 months, during which Israel attacked
Palestinians at will; Hamas won the Palestinian elections on the
basis of its truce, but Israel, the US, and Europe used that as an
excuse to starve the Palestinians; Hamas finally called off their
unilateral truce after repeated Israeli shellings; a small cell of
Palestinians attacked an Israeli border post, killing two soldiers
and kidnapping one to try to set up a prisoner exchange -- Israel
holds more than 8,000 Palestinian prisoners; Israel bombs critical
infrastructure in Gaza, including the only power plant, sends tanks
and artillery in, and -- well, the list here is long; a similar
incident happens on the Lebanon border, capturing two Israeli
soliders, so Israel attacks Lebanon the same way, destroying the
Beirut airport. For all this, Israel now has two war fronts,
ostensibly to rescue three soldiers although they've lost seven
soldiers in Lebanon, and they've only redoubled the fear and
determination of their neighbors.

What we're seeing here is that Israel's leadership has no plan,
no real concept of what they're doing. They're trapped in their own
delusions, senselessly flailing at them. What they are is trapped
in the idiocy of their own rhetoric. Sharon's insistence on only
acting unilaterally denied the Palestinian Authority any authority,
while limiting Israel's ability to police Gaza except through such
crude measures as artillery and bombs -- measures Israel had little
compunction about using, given their past practice of defense by
massive retaliation and collective punishment, justified by the
ease with which they habitually branded Palestinians as terrorists.
In effect, Israel has been seduced by a self-image of omnipotence.
The more they fail, the more force they apply, because ultimately
force is the only thing they have left to depend on. Justice is
an option they forswore long ago.

Israel's reactions in this crisis, at least since the Shalit
capture, appear to be driven by the culture of the security arms
with little or no opposition or control from Olmert and Peretz --
perhaps because the latter two are not military people, nor are
they peace people, and therefore are insecure leaders. But there
is a peculiar political logic to what they're doing that seems to
be deep-seated within Israel. The following is a quote from Yossi
Klein Halev (from The New Republic, quoted on
War in Context)
which articulates the logic behind this ideology:

The next Middle East war -- Israel against genocidal Islamism --
has begun. The first stage of the war started two weeks ago, with the
Israeli incursion into Gaza in response to the kidnapping of an
Israeli soldier and the ongoing shelling of Israeli towns and
kibbutzim; now, with Hezbollah's latest attack, the war has spread to
southern Lebanon. Ultimately, though, Israel's antagonists won't be
Hamas and Hezbollah but their patrons, Iran and Syria. The war will go
on for months, perhaps several years. There may be lulls in the
fighting, perhaps even temporary agreements and prisoner
exchanges. But those periods of calm will be mere respites.

The goals of the war should be the destruction of the Hamas regime
and the dismantling of the Hezbollah infrastructure in southern
Lebanon. Israel cannot coexist with Iranian proxies pressing in on its
borders. In particular, allowing Hamas to remain in power -- and to
run the Palestinian educational system -- will mean the end of hopes
for Arab-Israeli reconciliation not only in this generation but in the
next one too.

For the Israeli right, this is the moment of "We told you so." The
fact that the kidnappings and missile attacks have come from southern
Lebanon and Gaza -- precisely the areas from which Israel has
unilaterally withdrawn -- is proof, for right-wingers, of the
bankruptcy of unilateralism.

Yet the right has always misunderstood the meaning of unilateral
withdrawal. Those of us who have supported unilateralism didn't expect
a quiet border in return for our withdrawal but simply the creation of
a border from which we could more vigorously defend ourselves, with
greater domestic consensus and international understanding. The
anticipated outcome, then, wasn't an illusory peace but a more
effective way to fight the war. The question wasn't whether Hamas or
Hezbollah would forswear aggression but whether Israel would act with
appropriate vigor to their continued aggression.

Characterizing Israel's enemy as "genocidal Islamism" is itself a
very peculiar way of looking at the world. I'm not aware of any such
thing, so on first approximation this sounds like a snark hunt -- a
lot of thrashing and collateral destruction to root out nobody. I'm
not saying there are no repressive or even homocidal Islamists, but
it's a big leap from stoning the occasional adulterer to setting off
a car bomb and a big leap again from there to genocide -- car bombs
have been characterized as the poor man's air force, and we don't
generally think of air bombardment as genocide. But as the quote
unwinds, "genocidal Islamism" starts to take on real faces: Hamas,
Hezbollah, Syria, Iran. The logic here appears to be that anyone
who opposes or disdains Israel is ultimately genocidal. We shouldn't
need to rehash where that paranoia comes from, but one point need
be made: it takes an extraordinary amount of arrogance to translate
that paranoia into an aggressive war against most or maybe all of
the Middle East. One more thought is that the only weapons Israel
has that has the reach to attack all those imagined "genocidal
Islamists" are nuclear. If Israel leaders follow that logic as
stubbornly as they've followed their logic to date, they'll be the
ones who make the leap from the present scattered atrocities to
genocide. Having demonized everyone, how else can they safeguard
themselves?

Gray on Globalization

I've had the April 27, 2006 issue of The New York Review of Books
in a pile next to my desk, planning on writing something about John
Gray's "The Global Delusion" review of several books on globalization.
The first quote is a summary of Daniel Cohen's book Globalization
and Its Enemies:

"Today's globalization," [Cohen] notes, "is 'immobile'" Goods are
produced and marketed on a planetary scale but those who live in rich
countries encounter other societies chiefly through television and
exotic vacations. There are politically controversial migrations of
poor people from the Middle East and Africa to Europe and from Mexico
to the United States, but immigrants still make up only around 3
percent of the world's population today, whereas in 1913 it was about
10 percent. Again, trade has expanded greatly in the past thirty years
but a great deal of it occurs between rich countries. The fifteen
longstanding members of the European Union make up around 40 percent
of global commerce, but two thirds of their imports and exports are
traded within Europe itself. As Cohen puts it, "in wealthy countries
globalization is largely imaginary."

The belief that financial globalization is promoting economic
development in poor countries is also delusive. Global financial
markets have few incentives to equip poor countries to be globally
productive. It may be profitable to computerize a grocery store in New
York, but in Lagos customers are too poor to pay the prices required
by such investment. The result is that technology is very unevenly
diffused, and the poor stay poor.

However, the reason is not that rich countries are victimizing poor
countries. The poverty of developing countries is often blamed on
unfair terms of trade, and there ccan be little doubt that
protectionist practices in agriculture both within the EU and in the
US, for example, have hindered poor countries; but Cohen argues that
on the whole trade is not as unequal as has been widely thought. The
basic reason that poor countries stay poor is that they have little
that rich countries want or need.

"To understand today's globalization," he observes dryly, "requires
that one renounce the idea that the poor are stunted or exploited by
globalization." The poor of the world are not so much exploited as
neglected and forgotten. At the same time the press and television are
drenching them with images of the riches they lack. For the poor,
globalization is not an accomplished fact but a condition that remains
to be achieved. The irony of the current phase of globalization is
that it universalizes the demand for a better life without providing
the means to satisfy it.

This strikes me as approximately right in general, although I
would add that when first world capitalists do engage the third
world -- the more au courant "developing world" terminology seems
prejudicial to this discussion, since the point is that they aren't
developing -- it is with advantage in mind, which easily enough
maps to exploitation. My other point is that the poor in the US
are neglected in the same way -- a point which the last line of
the quote underlines. It's easy to make sense of this phenomena
as global class struggle, but few people on either side see it
that way, because few people have a direct sense of exploitation,
but many or most can identify cultural differences that correlate
in their minds with continued disparities of wealth.

In this world of mismatched views, anything that disrupts our
sheltered sense of civilization is terrorism, but how else can
an outsider get our attention? In the old conservatism the poor
were always with you, but in neo-world the poor are out of sight
and out of mind -- as much as possible, anyway. That's a program
for not solving problems, for periodic eruptions of rude shocks,
and for nasty reprisals. We know from history that distancing is
what makes atrocities palatable, and therefore more likely.

Gray's take on globalization goes beyond his books to focus
on limits to growth -- resource dependencies, environment, etc.:

This conjunction of intensifying scarcity in energy supplies with
accelerating climate change is the other face of globalization. It
poses a large question mark over Cohen's belief that the main problem
with globalization is that it is incomplete, for it suggets that
completing it may not be feasible. The current phase is only the
extension to the wider world of the industrial revolution that began
in England a couple of centuries ago, but already it is destabilizing
the environmental systems on which all industrial societies depend.
Extending the energy-intensive lifestyle of the rich world to the
rest of humankind would have an even more destabilizing impact.

I'm reminded here that Kenneth Deffeyes starts his book Beyond
Oil off with a quote from Kenneth Boulding:

Anyone who believes that exponential growth can go on forever in a
finite world is either a madman or an economist.

I've seen economics described as the science of scarcity --
i.e., economics is the study of how we allocate goods in a world
where goods are scarce. But when we look back at the material
comforts one once aspired to and compare them to what has been
widely achieved -- at least in the "developed world" -- and our
lack of satisfaction with them, one is tempted to conclude that
scarcity itself is a major product of capitalism. Indeed, the
engine that produces a greater sense of scarcity appears to be
nothing less than the growing disparity between rich and poor:
the richer the rich get, the steeper the demand for equality --
hence more strife, whether class conscious or confused; hence
more destruction, whether inflicted by rich or poor. It's as if
the contradictions within capitalism have to break loose even if
not in the form Marx imagined them.

On the other hand, if we could come up with a sense that some
achievable level of material comfort satisfies our needs and is
universally achievable, we would inch beyond scarcity, hence
beyond economics. Whether this is possible isn't all that clear,
but moving in the direction of greater equality is likely to be
key.

Rope-a-Dope Diplomacy

A week or two ago Helena Cobban posted a piece wondering whether
the Bush Administration had decided to change its approach to Iran.
Yesterday I landed on Fox News, where the All-Stars were squirming
around the question of whether the Bush Doctrine -- we'll wreck your
country and hurt you bad if we even suspect you're up to no good --
has been put back on the shelf, or maybe buried behind the garage.
I gather worry about Bush's willpower to start more wars is an issue
that has simmering on the far right for a while now. A shameless
apologist like Fred Barnes dismisses it, arguing that Bush always
tries diplomacy before he buckles down. Charles Krauthammer just
looks smug and menacing, reminding us Bush still has plenty of time
left as president.

What the right worries about is that when you threaten someone
and don't follow through you'll wind up looking weak, which will
make your threats less effective in the future. That may be true,
but what really knocks the hot air out of a bully is when he gets
the shit kicked out of him. One theory is that the US picked Iraq
out from the Axis of Evil because it looked to be the easy mark.
Had that been successful Bush would be positioned to go after the
others, much as the chimeric victory in Afghanistan set up war in
Iraq. But failure, a fact even if not an option, has the opposite
effect, as America's proven weakness emboldens so-called enemies.
This might be worrisome if Iran and North Korea were real threats
to anything more than the right's vanity image of America the
omnipotent. Of course, that's why the only Americans who worry
about not rushing to war in Iran and/or North Korea are the far
right ideologues. Everyone else has real problems to worry about.

If anything has changed in Bush's foreign policy, it's the facts,
not the theory. Having been pounded in Iraq, and watching Afghanistan
slip further away, Bush hasn't given up fighting, but he's been forced
into a lot of rope-a-dope. His insistence on Europe interceding with
Iran and China with North Korea gives him some breathing room, but it
also has had one significant side-effect: Europe's fear of what Bush
might do to Iran -- a major source of their oil -- has led them to go
along with US complaints about Iran's nuclear program, appeasement that
only weakens Europe and encourages further US aggression. One obvious
side effect of this is that Europe has been almost silent over Israel's
escalation into Gaza. Until recently, we had reason to hope that Europe
might become an effective force supporting international law. In laying
down for Bush and Olmert, they're biding their time while bullies get
their way. But then Munich always was in the heart of Europe, and
lessons once learned can conveniently be forgotten.

Music: Current count 12083 [12057] rated (+26), 892 [895] unrated (-3).
Spent all week on Jazz CG, still more prospecting than reviewing, which
means I'm behind. But I didn't manage a single break to rate a non-jazz
record, hence this weekly entry is empty. Did finally manage to listen
to a bit of the Sonic Youth and KRS-One albums in the car, and they
sound like they'll wind up on the A-list. Figure this next week to be
all jazz too, or damn close.

Jazz Prospecting (CG #10, Part 10)

Spent the whole week listening to jazz, and this is all I have to
show for it. Still nearly a week's worth of material in the unplayed
queue: a big box from Fresh Sound, four new Chico Hamiltons, the
Impulse Story series, advances from Blue Note and Verve, a
couple of new things in annoying advance packages from Clean Feed,
the Kieran Hebden-Steve Reid collabs, things by Wayne Horvitz, Mike
Stern, Fred Wesley, others more obscure. Still hope to get a column
this coming week, but the odds seem to be dropping maybe 50-50.
Need to write up what I've rated, and zero in on the good stuff on
the replay shelf. Have two records I'd be happy with as Pick Hits.
Don't have a clearcut Dud. How tacky would it be to give Kenny G
his lifetime achievement award?

Jeff Healey: Among Friends (2002 [2006], Stony
Plain): Blind from age one, Healey is a Canadian who learned to
play blues guitar laying his axe flat on his lap. After several
albums, he picked up a trumpet and started playing trad jazz,
inspired and spurred on by Dick Sudhalter on this first rough
cut album, now reissued by his new label. I prefer the new one,
It's Tight Like That, and not only because Chris Barber
joins in. But there's nice stuff here, like the rhythm guitar
on "Stardust" -- also the roughness in his voice, which seems
to be on the right track.
B+(*)

Jay Geils-Gerry Beaudoin and the Kings of Strings
(2005 [2006], Arbors): Two guitarists. Geils is the same guy who
ran the J. Geils Band, a venerable Boston rock group I never got
around to checking out. According to his bio, he was a big Benny
Goodman fan when he was growing up, and finally reverted to his
first love when he recorded Jay Geils Plays Jazz! (Stony
Plain; haven't heard it, but anything with Scott Hamilton is
promising in my book). Haven't heard Beaudoin before either --
he has several swing-oriented albums going back to the early
'90s. Beaudoin is also on Geils' jazz album, and they've taken
to calling themselves the Kings of Strings. The guitarists are
fine enough, but the only thing that keeps the hyperbole from
becoming laughable is the tag, "Featuring Aaron Weinstein" --
the young violinist whose debut, A Handful of Stars I
recommend highly. Beaudoin describes Weinstein as "the most
mature 19-year-old I've never met." Actually, he's the world's
youngest old fogie, a teenager who set his stars on Joe Venuti
and figured out how to get there. He's less impressive here than
on his own album, where he pointedly picked out his own choice
accompanists and went straight for Bucky Pizzarelli (and Houston
Person and Joe Ascione). Still, this is pretty enjoyable.
B+(**)

Maurice Hines: To Nat "King" Cole With Love (2005
[2006], Arbors): Singer tribute albums usually beg the question,
why not the original? I predict that once my original surprise
and delight wear off, this will wind in the Honorable Mentions,
but right now the only similar album I can think of that I find
this charming is Roseanna Vitro's Catching Some Rays --
as in Ray Charles, and obviously there the vocal comparison was
less in lay, so the music took over. Hines is Gregory's older
brother. He has the same talent set -- dancer, actor, singer,
in roughly that order -- but never got so famous. The songs
are the ones you know. Hines' voice is damn close to Cole's,
so he depends on ticks and nuances for variation. The band is
first rate -- some real swing, especially the Tommy Newsom
arrangements.
[A-]

Warren Vaché and the Scottish Ensemble: Don't Look Back
(2005 [2006], Arbors): The Scottish Ensemble is a string group, 12 in
number. Three arrangements were by 87-year-old Bill Finegan, "the dean
of arranging" -- means nothing to me. The others were by James Chirillo,
who conducted and plays a little guitar. Vaché's cornet is frequently
lovely, but the strings turn me off. Could be a dud, especially if I
wanted to do something on the deadly seduction strings hold for horn
players. The last two Vaché records I've heard were A-listed, so this
is no more personal than Waltz Again was for David Murray.
B-

Jeff Barnhart: In My Solitude (Arbors Piano Series, Volume
16) (2005 [2006], Arbors): Solo piano, a mix of stride and
slower pieces. One of Barnhart's two originals here is "Remembering
Ralph" -- for Sutton, an obvious influence. I find no real fault
with this, nor much interest either, except that I wouldn't mind
hearing more fast ones like "Stealin' Apples," the Fats Waller
piece that closes the album.
B

Linton Garner Trio: Quiet Nights (2002 [2006],
Cellar Live): Linton was Erroll Garner's older brother. Born
1915, raised in Pittsburgh, played piano for Billy Eckstine and
others in the late '40s, moved to Montreal in 1962, and later
to Vancouver, where he was a fixture on the scene until his
death in 2003 -- 26 years after his more famous younger brother.
His trio here includes Ross Taggart on tenor sax and Russ Botten
on bass. The program offers standards with one Garner original.
Garner gets a lot of space to open up, and Taggart has a broad,
lush tone. It's all quite straightforward, very comfortable.
B+(**)

Joe Locke-Geoffrey Keezer Group: Live in Seattle
(2005 [2006], Origin): A quartet with vibes, piano or other keyboard,
bass and drums. Most of this races along at quite a clip, which
seems to work for Keezer and against Locke. Indeed, in two plays
I've gotten very little out of the vibes, and I've gotten rather
tired of the galloping, crashing keyboards.
B-

The Source (2005 [2006], ECM): This Norwegian
group dates back to 1993 when three of four members were students
at the Trondheim Conservatory of Music. They recorded an album
in 2000 with Cikada string quartet -- haven't heard it, but it
got a favorable nod from Penguin Guide. ECM didn't list the
group members on the cover, as they often do. The name, and
probable leader, is saxophonist Trygve Seim, with trombonist
Øyvind Braekke providing a second horn. Mats Eilertsen, the
non-Trondheimer, plays bass. (The original bassist was Ingebrigt
Håker Flaten, best known for his work with Ken Vandermark.) Per
Oddvar Johansen drums. The lineup recalls groups with Roswell
Rudd and Albert Mangelsdorff, but toned way down in ECM's
customary way, jazz that is free but without offense. Takes
a while to sort it out, but this is promising.
[B+(**)]

Susanne Abbuehl: Compass (2003-04 [2006], ECM):
Second album by a Swiss-Dutch vocalist, singing slow pieces with
minimal accompaniment: mostly piano, with some clarinet for color
and occasional bits of percussion. She adds words to two pieces
by Chick Corea and Sun Ra. Two more pieces are her arrangements
of Lucio Berio "Folk Songs." More pieces add her music to words
from James Joyce, William Carlos Williams, and Feng Meng-Lung.
And one piece is original start to finish. Quite nice even if
only consumed for atmospherics, although there's probably a good
deal more to it for those with the patience to ferret it out.
B+(**)

Martin Speake: Change of Heart (2002 [2006],
ECM): English alto saxist, in a quartet with Bobo Stenson, Mick
Hutton and Paul Motian -- names enough to make the front cover.
Not familiar with him, although he's recorded quite a bit over
the last ten years. This is rather inside out, nice balanced --
Stenson certainly earns his keep. A fine record, the sort of
art and craft we hope for, something that sustains our interest
all the way to the end. Probably too modest to be a great one,
but we'll see.
[B+(***)]

Open Door: So Close to Beautiful (2006, Hipbone/Kindred
Rhythm): Actually a soft hip-hop album, reminds me a bit of the Stereo
MC's, perhaps crossed with some trip-hop. One cover: "DJ," from David
Bowie's Eno-produced period. Principals are Vicki Bell (vocals, remix),
Peter Adams (keybs), Ray Grappone (beats), with a bunch of guests.
B+(*)

The Bob Gallo Quintet: Wake-Up Call (2005 [2006],
CD Baby): No label evident here, not even the usual website, although
the hype sheet says this is available from North Country, and google
points to CD Baby. I've used the latter before on self-released albums
where no label is evident, so that will do here. No session dates
either, but CD Baby gives this as a May 2005 release, while the hype
sheet says Sept. 1, 2006. Gallo plays guitar. His resume mostly lists
TV work, which doesn't cut much grease hereabouts. The quintet includes
trumpet (Alex Sipiagin), piano (Misha Tsiganov), bass (Boris Koslov)
and drums (Gene Jackson). The music is competent postbop with nice solo
work from the the main three.
B

Ben Monder Trio: Dust (1996 [2006], Sunnyside):
Having appeared on ninety-some albums, Monder is a flexible postbop
guitarist who can be depended on to fit in and add something every
time out. This reissue of a 1997 album originally in Arabesque shows
him in the lead, laying out his kit, a fair approximation of the state
of the art in jazz guitar.
B+(*)

Kenny Wheeler: It Takes Two! (2005 [2006], Cam
Jazz): Guitarists, that is: John Abercrombie and John Parricelli.
And two more: Wheeler on flugelhorn and Anders Jormin on bass.
I'm not all that clear on how the guitars sort out -- there are
fairly detailed notes here, but I've been listening in passing.
Wheeler has recorded a pile of records recently for this label,
all slight, intricate, intriguing, indecisive. This is one more
I don't quite know what to do with.
[B+(**)]

Pete Robbins: Waits & Measures (2004 [2006],
Playscape): Second album. Plays alto sax and clarinet. This is a
sextet with Sam Sadigursky on heavier reeds (tenor sax and bass
clarinet), Eliot Krimsky on keybs, guitar, bass and drums. First
song, "Inkhead," is delightfully disjointed, almost Monkish.
Nothing else stands out like that, but the album continues with
flashes of thoughtful, intricate, sometimes quirky music.
B+(**)

Thomas Chapin Trio: Ride (1995 [2006], Playscape):
One of the most influential forces in the downtown resurgence of
avant-jazz in New York in the early '90s, Chapin died young, age 40,
leukemia. One measure of the respect accorded Chapin is the amount
of live material that has been released since his death, including
a massive 8-CD box from Knitting Factory defiantly titled Alive.
Another is Michael Musillami's Playscape label, which is more or less
the house organ of Chapin's former bandmates. So it's fitting that
one more piece pop up here. The trio joins Mario Pavone and Michael
Sarin. The record starts harsh before they ease off, find a groove,
then tear it up and blare some more. Chapin plays flute as well as
alto and sopranino sax, well enough I can't complain. Sarin takes
a long drum solo -- I enjoyed every moment. Pavone plays some heavy
duty bass. The set closes with a "Ticket to Ride" that made my day.
[B+(***)]

Michael Musillami's Dialect: Fragile Forms (2006,
Playscape): A guitarist with a dozen albums going back to 1990.
Also the proprietor of a label which since 2000 has focused on
an interesting circle of downtown New Yorkers, most with ties to
the late Thomas Chapin. This group is a quartet with Michael
Madsen on piano, Drew Gress on bass, and Matt Wilson on drums.
Although Musillami is credited with writing all of the songs,
the key player is Madsen, who often seems to be stomping off
orthogonally to whatever the others are doing. I suppose that
means the fragility of the forms is shown by fracturing them.
Some chance this record will grow on me even more.
[B+(***)]

Lucian Ban & Alex Harding: Tuba Project (2005
[2006], CIMP): Well, if you're going to do a tuba project, the go
to guy is Bob Stewart, so at least they got that part right. I can
see why Ban, a New York-resident pianist from Romania, might want
to do such a thing, but I don't quite get the point of adding two
saxophones -- Harding's baritone and J.D. Allen's tenor. The fifth
member of the group is drummer Derrek Phillips, so Stewart winds
up stuck with the bass parts. Way way back when tuba was sometimes
used in place of bass, and some pieces like "Cajun Stomp" suggest
that, but "Muhal' Song" (for Abrams) is off in another direction.l
But the main problem I have is hearing just what's going on. Maybe
that's because I don't have the audiophile equipment producer Robert
Rusch sells. Or maybe I just don't have the ears. Will try it again.
[B+(*)]

Adam Lane Trio: Zero Degree Music (2005 [2006],
CIMP): A young bassist with big ambitions. He cites Ellington,
Stockhausen, and Japanese noise band Melt Banana as influences
prime influences. A more extensive list includes actual bassists:
Charles Mingus, of course, and Bootsy Collins, why not? He has
one group called Full Throttle Orchestra, and another called
Supercharger Jazz Orchestra. He has orchestral works and solo
works. Also a quartet with John Tchicai, Paul Smoker and Barry
Altschul. I haven't heard any of those -- another SFFR. Before
I looked him up, this one struck me as avant-grunge, recalling
Christgau's first Nirvana review: "the kind of loud, slovenly,
tuneful music you think no one will ever work a change on again
until the next time it happens, whereupon you wonder why there
isn't loads more. It seems to simple." This is simple like that.
Lane's pieces are all pulse, some slow, most fast. Vijay Anderson
drums along, reinforcing the pulse rather than fighting it. All
this, especially stretched over 70 minutes, wouldn't amount to
much without the third member, saxophonist Vinny Golia. He's
another ambitious guy, with his own label and a huge catalogue
I've barely cracked, but here he too keeps it simple, riffing
over whatever pulse Lane lays out. Plays soprano and tenor, and
while I naturally prefer the big horn the small one works just
as well here. Could be upgraded. Could be a Pick Hit.
A-

Trio-X (Joe McPhee, Dominic Duval, Jay Rosen): Moods:
Playing With the Elements (2004 [2006], CIMP): McPhee
started recording around 1968. He is one of the most accomplished
jazz musicians of the era, the kind of guy who should be climbing
up Downbeat's Hall of Fame ballot, yet I wonder how many jazz fans
have actually heard him. I haven't heard many myself: 9, compared
to AMG's list of 46 albums and compilations. This is because no
one has been more doggedly marginal, commercially speaking, but
it's also because he's such a firm believer in the magic of the
improvisatory moment that his records strike one -- me, anyway --
more as instances than statements. Half-a-dozen records in, you
sort of know what he can do, beyond which it isn't necessary to
hear all the times he does it -- not that I wouldn't mind. This
one strikes me as in that same vein, a good example of his range
that doesn't quite stand out. One unusual thing about McPhee is
that he is the only major jazz musician since Benny Carter to
distinguish himself on both brass and reeds. Here is plays tenor
sax, flugelhorn and pocket trumpet, and balances them evenly,
doing similar things in distinct voices. Duval and Rosen are
pretty much the Cadence combine's house band, a dependable free
base for any labelmate who shows up. Haven't heard their other
Trio-X albums, so can't compare them. Could be being overly
cautious here -- if you don't know McPhee, this is as good a
place to start as any.
B+(***)

Billy Stein Trio: Hybrids (2005 [2006], Barking Hoop):
Debut album by a guitarist who "has been working in New York for the
best 30 years, continually honing his style." Stein played in Milt
Hinton's Jazz Workshop in the mid-'70s, in a class that produced Sam
Furnace and Kevin Norton. Don't know much more than that, but by the
time Norton finally recorded Stein his guitar style was about as
honed as you can get. He dances adroitly on a surface of bass and
drums, always keeping a step ahead of your expectations. The trio
is ably filled out by Rashid Bakr, who's played for William Parker,
and Reuben Radding, the guy you call when Parker doesn't answer his
phone. The bass-guitar interplay here is particuarly sweet.
[A-]

Instinctual Eye: Born in Brooklyn (2005 [2006],
Barking Hoop): Free improv from a multilateral trio consisting of
Kevin Norton (drums, vibes), Frode Gjerstad (clarinet, alto sax),
and Nick Stephens (bass). The two long pieces take some strange
curves, breaking up into noise then suddenly cohering into
something quite unexpected -- intense details, less clear as
to the overall trajectory. The longer first piece has Norton
mostly on vibes, a finely tuned percussion kit that contrasts
strongly with the clarinet.
B+(**)

Frequency (2006, Thrill Jockey): I'm tempted to file
this eponymous group album under Edward Wilkerson Jr., since he's
probably the senior member and definitely carries the loudest horn,
but most of his records are currently filed under 8 Bold Souls, an
avant big band he was definitely the main force behind. He plays
tenor sax and clarinet here, wood flute and bells. But everyone
plays flutes of some kind or another, especially Nicole Mitchell,
who ranges from piccolo to bass flute, plus melodica, Egyptian harp,
and plastic bag. She has four albums and a Downbeat rising star poll
win. She's also credited with two pieces to one each for the others,
and perhaps more importantly the flutes take over after an early sax
squall and the albums ends with a whimper. The other members are
bassist Harrison Bankhead and percussionist Avreeayl Ra, both steady
hands on Chicago's fringe. Lots of interesting spots here, but I
have trouble keeping the thread, and weary of the flute register.
B+(*)

Bang on a Can & Don Byron: A Ballad for Many
(2004-06 [2006], Cantaloupe): Byron just plays clarinet on three
songs here -- the Bang on a Can All Stars have a regular clarinet
player, Evan Ziporyn, who handles the balance. Byron wrote most
(all?) of the music, produced the album, and wrote the liner notes
you have to go to the website to read. So, effectively, this is
Bang on a Can Plays Don Byron, much like they previously played
Eno or Terry Riley. I tend to think of Bang on a Can as natural
successors to the Kronos Quartet: a classical-rooted repertoire
group that crosses over into semipopular waters to show that their
own chosen style needn't be hopelessly academic. But Kronos was/is
a stock concept -- the string quartet. Bang on a Can seems more
like a production company, with a lineup that shifts according to
the project instead of forcing the project to conform. In this
case, the lineup is clarinet, guitar, piano, cello, bass, drums.
The cello is the main difference from Byron's own orchestrations,
and it dominates here. Not sure what I think of this: strikes me
as stiff and heavy, unjazzlike, but otherwise hard to classify.
[B]

Steven Bernstein's Millennial Territory Orchestra: MTO
Volume 1 (2005 [2006], Sunnyside): This group has been
gigging around New York since 1999, so I've heard a lot about
them over the years, and any record by them would be welcome --
if nothing else, just a way to map the reports to a sound. The
idea came out of Robert Altman's Kansas City film, which
Bernstein did research for -- listening to tapes from the old
territory bands that toured around Kansas City in the late '20s
and early '30s. This follows the sound a lot more closely than,
say, Ken Vandermark's Territory Band, but it doesn't stop there,
pulling in Prince's "Darling Nikki," Stevie Wonder's "Signed,
Sealed and Delivered," and something from Sly Stone I don't
recognize -- Bernstein says, "I made Sly Stone sound like an
early Bennie Moten thing." (The notes leave something to be
desired; blind faith in the ability of live music to overcome
critical facilities isn't all that popular a position among
us critics.) Two vocals threw me at first, Matt Munisteri's
more old-timey "Pennies From Heaven" kicking in first, Doug
Wamble's Wonder tune slowly getting there. Working on it.
[A-]

Sex Mob: Sexotica (2006, Thirsty Ear):
Figured I should play this next after MTO, since this is
another Steven Bernstein group. Or at least was: working off an
advance (release date Aug. 1) here which comes with no info on
who plays what, or who wrote what, or when it was recorded, or
any of that. Thirsty Ear has been one of the most consistently
interesting jazz labels of the new century, but they've never
gotten their basic bookkeeping down. What the hype sheet says
is: "Sex Mob and Good & Evil present an electro-acoustic
fantasy inspired by Martin Denny." I have to admit I'm not down
with Denny -- as best I recall, what made his exotica exotic was
liberal use of bird calls. These guys are clever enough to do a
bit of that with acoustic horns, but this time maybe they got
too clever? Not clear where the sex is.
[B]

Beans (featuring William Parker and Hamid Drake): Only
(2006, Thirsty Ear): Another advance, but street date here is April 4,
so this one should be out. Can't find the useless info sheet either, so
time I know even less than the usual next to nothing. Beans is half of
the former Antipop Consortium: raps a little, mixes beats. With Antipop
did a previous Blue Series album with Matthew Shipp. Parker and Drake
are a little out of their depth here, although the acoustic bass riff
is nice to hear as a pulse-line. [PS: Found the hype sheet. Starts
with this: "The Ornette Coleman of this rap shit/The link between
Suicide, Sun Ra and Bambaataa." Seems to be a line from Beans on
Beans. Actually, I'm not even sure he's the Curtis Amy of rap shit,
but that would be closer to the mark.]
B+(*)

Carl Hancock Rux: Good Bread Alley (2006, Thirsty
Ear): As long as I'm in a bad mood, here's another advance, release
date May 23, out already. Don't know Rux. Read that he does spoken
word -- how does that differ from rap? -- but this is all sung.
Could be something here, but it's hard to tell, and whatever it is
it isn't jazz. Bad sign is yet another riff on "Motherless Child."
B

Eri Yamamoto: Cobalt Blue (2006, Thirsty Ear):
Another advance, out July 18. From Osaka, moved to New York to
study at New School and stuck around. This is her debut, a piano
trio, originals aside from a Japanese folk song and standards by
Porter and Gershwin. But she made a pretty strong impression last
year handling the piano for William Parker's trio, Luc's
Lantern. Her trio mates here are David Ambrosio on bass
and Ikuo Takeuchi on drums. Strong rhythm, nice touch. One of
the better piano trios I've heard lately.
[B+(**)]

Thirsty Ear Presents: Nu Jazz Today (2002-06 [2006],
Thirsty Ear): Another advance. Don't see a release date, so perhaps
this isn't a real release. In any case it's just a label sampler,
with two tracks each from five recent (or near-future) albums:
Groundtruther, Longitude; Sex Mob, Sexotica; Nils
Petter Molvaer, An American Compilation; Matthew Shipp,
One; Carl Hancock Rux, Good Bread Alley. The first
three fit into the label's jazztronica stream, even though Molvaer
evolved his own independently. Shipp's solo piano and Rux's soul
food fit somewhere else. Good stuff, but docked for uselessness --
unlike, I might add, their two previous samplers, Blue Series
Essentials and The Shape of Jazz to Come. Also, given
how Nu Soul stacks up, they should think twice about describing
anything as Nu Jazz.
B-

Dr. Lonnie Smith: Jungle Soul (2005 [2006], Palmetto):
I probably should have placed Smith's previous Palmetto album, Too
Damn Hot!, on my Duds list, but I had no idea that anyone might
have been taken by such a slight and tepid outing. So that this one
is pretty good comes as a big surprise. I don't know what to make of
producer Matt Baltisaris's credits for "rhythm and acoustic guitar,"
but they can't have hurt. Guitar is central, most clearly electric,
almost certainly the work of Peter Bernstein, who displays a rare
knack for working within the soul jazz genre. Drummer Allison Miller
also works inside, most tastefully on the chilldown closer, "Jungle
Wisdom." Given such restraint from the group, even Smith dials his
Hammond down, finding a temperate range that's just right. Maybe the
previous album was too damn hot after all.
B+(**)

John Pizzarelli/The Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra: Dear
Mr. Sinatra (2005 [2006], Telarc): Don't recall seeing this
in credits before, but for the record Pizzarelli wears Brioni suits
and formal wear. He's photographed walking on the beach in his Brioni
suit with an umbrella, but barefoot -- guess he doesn't have a shoe
contract yet. The title suggests the likely problem is too formal and
too respectful, and there's something to that, although formal is the
last word one would use to describe his soft-cushioned voice. The
Claytons, Hamilton, et al., know this music cold, and warm it up per
the instructions on the box. In other words, nothing new, but most
of the songs wear well anyway.
B

Yellowjackets: Twenty Five (2005 [2006], Heads Up):
The group, founded in 1981 by Russell Ferrante and Jimmy Haslip and
a couple others now long gone, has been around for 25 years now. To
mark the occasion, we get a live album with old songs and a bonus
DVD with more of the same. The current group includes saxophonist
Bob Mintzer since 1990 and drummer Marcus Baylor since 2000. Haslip
plays electric bass. Ferrante and Mintzer play synths as well as
acoustic instruments. Never listened to them before I started Jazz
CG, but based on their previous album I found myself wondering which
smooth jazz group was the all-time worst -- their major competition
seems to come from Acoustic Alchemy and Urban Knights, but I can't
say as I've exhaustively researched the subject. This one, however,
isn't bad. It no doubt helps that they get to cherry-pick from their
songlist. It also seems to be the case that smooth jazz groups in
general, regardless of what they'll stoop to in the studio, fall
back on their jazz chops when they go live. Mintzer certainly knows
his way around Michael Brecker if not David Murray. Ferrante knows
his Chick Corea if not Dave Burrell. Baylor can play around the
beat as well as on it -- "Greenhouse" strikes me as pretty valid,
all the way down to Mintzer's solo coda. The "free bonus DVD" is
just another concert.
B+(*)

The Chris Byars Octet: Night Owls (2001-02 [2006],
Smalls): A smallish big band, with two brass and three saxes, the
latter doubling on clarinet and flutes, plus the usual piano-bass-drums.
Pretty mainstream stuff, with the harmonies layered on unobtrusively,
none of that postmodernist harmonic theory. Even swings some. I'm more
pleased than impressed.
B+(**)

Misja Fitzgerald Michel: Encounter (2005 [2006],
No Format/Sunnyside): Guitarist, French I think, plays acoustic and
electric, 6- and 12-string. The latter reminds me of one of the
first reviews I wrote, where I lampooned Leo Kottke for sounding
like he had too many strings on his guitar. But the density works
better here, especially since he has a first rate bassist in Drew
Gress. Nine of eleven pieces are trios, with Jochen Rueckert on
drums. Two songs each from Coleman and Coltrane, one from Shorter,
one from Bill Stewart, the rest originals. The trio pieces are
dense and meaty. The other two songs feature Ravi Coltrane on
tenor sax. He sounds terrific, but putting him on the opener is
a bit of misdirection.
[B+(**)]

And these are final grades/notes on records I put back for further
listening the first time around.

Jeff Healey & the Jazz Wizards: It's Tight Like That
(2005 [2006], Stony Plain): Now that I've heard Healey's first trad
jazz album -- haven't heard his earlier albums, which evidently were
blues or blues-rock -- I'm impressed at how much tighter his band has
become. In particular, Christopher Plock has a much larger role on
clarinet and various saxes, Jesse Barksdale has taken over most of
the guitar, and violinist Drew Jurecka is a major addition. Of course,
guest Chris Barber looms huge here. He gives Healey a trumpet's best
friend: a trombone -- remember that Armstrong never left home without
one. He sings three songs, and he keeps everyone sharp -- he's played
this kind of music fifty-some years. Recorded live, a terrific show.
A-

Ray Mantilla: Good Vibrations (2006, Savant): The
vibes man is Mike Freeman, and he gets off to a terrific start on
two Lionel Hampton classics, but loses ground after that, as the
Latin percussion takes over -- "special guest" Steve Berrios as
well as the leader. Nothing wrong with that, but they need some
little thing extra to make it remarkable, and that only happens
when Enrique Fernández switches from flute to baritone sax for a
finale called -- what else? -- "Bari Con Salsa."
B+(*)

Chicago Underground Duo: In Praise of Shadows (2005
[2006], Thrill Jockey): Two now, or again, just Rob Mazurek and Chad
Taylor. When they stick to their main instruments, cornet and drums
respectively, their spareness is attractive. However, they use the
occasion to work all sorts of extra junk into the mix -- most of it
can be categorized as electronics, but prepared piano and prepared
vibes also enter the mix. At its most otherworldly it even sounds a
bit like Harry Partch. Unfortunately, more often it doesn't sound
like much of anything.
B

Reading Billmon

At some point I'd like to go back and read the blog archives for
Billmon, perhaps compiling a
file of quotables. I started reading that blog on the day after
Katrina hit New Orleans, so that's as far back as I go -- don't
know how much more there is. One significant thing is that he's
managed to sort out a set of terminology that works consistently
for problems that often leave me thrashing. Examples: the Cheney
Administration, Shrub, New Pravda, the Senate Whitewash Committee.
Some of what he does is plainly meant in jest, especially when he
fires up Photoshop (or whatever he uses; Gimp maybe?). But he also
hits on some rather deep ideas, and does so more consistently than
any other blog I've run across.

But if extinction, or a return to the dark ages, is indeed our fate
-- or our grandchildren's fate, anyway -- I think it will be a
Hobson's choice as to which cultural tendency will bear the largest
share of the blame:

the arrogant empiricism that has made human society into an
instrument of technological progress instead of the other way
around,

the ignorant prejudices of the masses, who are happy to consume
the material benefits of the Enlightenment but unwilling to assume
intellectual responsibility for them, or

the cynical nihilism of corporate and political elites who are
willing to play upon the latter in order to perpetuate the former,
which is, after all is said and done, their ultimate claim to
power.

Actually, I broke that last line up, inserting the numbered list
codes to put a little more space around the three choices -- to make
it easier to think about them separately, even though they ultimately
turn into one of those cyclical things where three beasts chase each
other's tails. The three views -- they may well be different aspects
of or perspectives on some underlying unity -- are worth unpacking
and examining. Not that I want to head down that path here, but I
will point out that the first one used to be talked about seriously
on the left before the right made such a hash of it -- I'm thinking
specifically of books like Jacques Ellul's The Technological
Society, work by Kuhn and (especially) Feyerabend on science,
and a wide range of others who have doubts about the blessings of
unfettered progress. As for the principals of the other two views,
they've been around for a long time, but lately have become so
garish they remind me of Douglas Adams' SEP: how do you make an
object that no one sees? You make it so outrageously hideous that
people are embarrassed to even acknowledge it, so they silently
avert their eyes. There was a time when the fable of "The Emperor's
New Clothes" was a gentle reminder to trust our eyes over manners
as a guide to truth. But today, in the hands of someone like Karl
Rove, it's become an election strategy.

Here's another series of Billmon quotes, from a
post called
"A House Divided," on blue-red theory:

If I had to boil our modern kulturkampf down to two words, they
wouldn't be blue and red, they would be "traditionalist" and "modern."
On one side are the believers in the old ways -- patriarchy,
hierarchy, faith, a reflexive nationalism, and a puritanical, if
usually hypocritical, attitude towards sexual morality. On the other
are the rootless cosmopolitians -- secular, skeptical (although at
times susceptible to New Age mythology), libertine (although some of us
aren't nearly as libertine as we'd like to be) and less willing to
equate patriotism with blind allegiance, either to a flag or a
government. . . .

Rapid social changes often produce cultural reaction, which in turn
spawns angry political movements. Post Civil War industrialization and
financial colonization produced the Populists -- both good (Mother
Jones) and bad (Tom Watson and Pitchfork Ben Tilman). The waves of
19th and early 20th century immigration spurred the rise of the Know
Nothings and the modern Klu Klux Klan. The New Deal and the civil
rights era incited the John Birch Society and Goldwater
conservatism. And now the blowback effects of globalization (what
conservative ideologues sneeringly deride as "multiculturalism")
coupled with the patriotic and xenophobic passions unleashed by the
war against Al Qaeda, have turbocharged the traditionalists into
declaring something close to all-out war on the modernists -- as
symbolized, at the moment, by the traitorous New York
Times. . . .

The right, in particular, needs the culture war like a paralytic
needs his iron lung. It reinforces a simplistic sense of tribal
identity (us against the other) that is essential to the paranoid
political style -- as Richard Hofstadter dubbed it -- but that
increasingly doesn't exist in American society as a whole. The reality
(and this brings me to my second point) is that there are not two
cultural camps in America but three: the traditionalists, the
modernists, and those in the middle, who may be pulled in one
direction or another by their ethnic backgrounds, religious faiths,
personal life histories or any or all of a thousand other factors.

I left out some wrinkles in a more complex argument -- as well as
a lot of stuff about the Spanish Civil War that would be a lot scarier
if there was some modern analog to Nazi Germany on the sidelines ready
to side with the right -- but this strikes me as pretty close to the
mark. One further conclusion I draw from this is that the political
struggle between the right and everyone else -- not just the left --
is staggeringly asymetrical. The right insists on issues that the left
long ago assumed were solved by common sense. The right uses tactics
that the left wouldn't dream of using. And somehow the right is taken
as having legitimate concerns while the left is disparaged as loony.
Unfortunately, the only thing that seems to have any chance to turn
public opinion around is how the triumphant right's uncritiqued bad
ideas turn to ruin.

Billmon certainly see where this is going; hence the pessimism of
the first quote. He questions why Gore works so hard to propagandize
this Inconvenient Truth, asking perhaps if it's "the only sane
alternative to despair." I have a simpler, if less convincing, view:
if you're free enough to do what you want, you do what you are -- what
lets you look at yourself in the mirror and respect the person you see.
Ex-politicians suddenly find themselves with that freedom. Jimmy Carter
went off to build houses for poor people, which isn't exactly what he
did to get to the White House, and to some extent reinforces the notion
that as a politician he wasn't true to himself. Gore rediscovered science
and public policy. Clinton? Well, as long as Hilary's running he isn't
really free, so he's stuck in a strange place, but he's been there so
long it may be all the home he knows. On the other hand, GHW Bush went to
work for Carlyle and Bob Dole sold Viagra. Those two were money-grubbing
sellouts all their lives, so I guess we can grant them consistency in a
peculiar form of integrity. But that just rewards the right's asymetric
politics: why is it that we so easily trust crooks knowing that's what
they are, but are so distrustful of anyone who wants to serve the broad
public but has to jump through hoops of deceit to get the chance? Two
reasons are the "ignorant masses" and "the cynical nihilism of corporate
and political elites" mentioned in that first quote.

I got the following note from a jazz publicist who recently looked
at my website and read some of the non-jazz entries:

Prolific and opinionated. I like that. Maybe b/c my life is
surrounded by liberals, it's so hard to believe how conservative "we"
are. Don't want to seem like another ostrich. I suppose the fear
factor created by our government is a useful tool to keep so many down
and believing in them, and so scary. Glad you are out there writing
about it.

This got me to thinking about why I write this stuff. It certainly
isn't because I like politics, although some things that I did take a
liking to as a child may have disposed me in that direction: geography,
history. It's also the case that two cousins I was particularly close
to -- for all intents and purposes the only people I knew when I was a
teenager who actually went to college -- majored in political science,
and one married a Soviet affairs expert, so that made three. Partly
under their influence, I went through what I call my Kevin Phillips
phase, when I studied election results going back to the Civil War
and laboriously plotted them out on county maps. I knew who won every
state for every election, and could narrow many down to the county
level. I could recite the names of every US Senator since 1900, and
many, but certainly not most, US Representatives. I read Congressional
Quarterly for a while, and had a pretty good idea of who voted for
what.

But none of that fit my original interests. For most of my teens
what I really wanted to do was to design and build cars, especially
race cars. My short, troubled period in high school was mostly spent
in shop classes. I read most of the car magazines. I knew pretty
much the whole history of Formula One, Indy, NASCAR; quite a bit
about NHRA and even AHRA too. And quite a bit about street cars --
used to take a census of cars I spotted on trips. I didn't really
know anything about engineering, but I was always tops in my class
at science and math, so I probably could have done fine with a small
bit of direction. In fact, before I got into cars, I figured myself
to become a scientist. But I had no models in that direction. My
father worked in an airplane factory. He was good with metal and a
pretty fair carpenter, and I learned from him how to build things
that won't fall down. Or to rephrase that, I learned from him that
when you build things you have to understand how they want to fall
down and what it takes to not let them do that. Many years later
I realized that that's the basic key to engineering. So I don't
doubt that I could have been a successful engineer had I studied
in that direction, but I never did. In fact, I did manage to earn
a living as a software engineer for 20+ years, based on no formal
education at all -- I started designing typesetting systems, and
learned to program along the way, but that's jumping ahead of the
story.

Looking back now, I might have enjoyed becoming an engineer or
scientist, but the profession I would really have loved would have
been architecture. My basic passion was -- still is -- to build
things, useful things, pleasing things, and what more so than
living and working spaces? I know several young people -- children
of friends -- who are moving in that direction, and I envy them.
Seems too late for me now, but even now I think about getting into
some kind of construction business -- maybe something with computers
and home automation, something that would draw my interests and
skills together. But I can't do that now, because ever since you
know when I've been sucked into writing about the insane political
nonsense the political right is putting us through.

For me, this is the second time war has disrupted my life. The
first was Vietnam, when I was a teenager. When I was 16, Johnson
doubled the number of US troops in Vietnam. By the time I was 18,
the war was lost, but rather than "cut and run" -- that was when
the phrase was perfected -- the political powers went into denial
and stretched a pointless, vicious, brutal defeat out seven more
years. Needless to say, the local draft board was more than happy
to contribute my body to that cause. And I was determined enough
not to go that I would have gone to jail instead. My next door
neighbor didn't know any better, shipped over, and was killed. I
learned better. I spent those seven years studying every facet
of the war and the complex political, economic, sociological,
and philosophical underpinnings that made it possible. I kept
studying even after the Army decided they didn't want me any
more than I wanted them. But then the war ended, and I chucked
everything I knew and became a rock and roll critic. Supported
myself working in type shops. Reverted to my primal engineering
instincts. Learned to program, and was pretty successful at it.
Had twenty-some years of relatively normal life in peacetime.

Then when I watched the WTC towers crumble into ash it all came
back to me. They say 9/11 changed everything, and for me it did.
They say we now live in war, and for me that is true. As with the
previous war that so disrupted my life, all I could do was to
report for duty once more. As with Vietnam, this war does us and
everyone else vast harm. My job is to try to help people see that.
I feel somewhat qualified to do that because of what I learned in
that decade of the Vietnam War, and because of what I've learned
in the half-decade and counting of this one. But also it wasn't
just 9/11. Five years earlier I got to one of those midlife crises
where you start thinking about how your life got twisted around so
you never did those things you always wanted to do. I always wanted
to write a book, and most of what I knew about was what I studied
during the first war: the history and future of capitalism, how
it made the way we live and how we want to move beyond it, and why
it is important that we do so -- stuff about the limits of growth,
the pointlessness of excessive accumulation, the psychic damage of
competition. I started to read more, sketched it out, wrote some
drafts, but didn't get very far.

One thing I figured out but never came up with a way to write
about was that unless fundamental attitudes changed the future ran the
increasingly risk of tragic sabotage -- what we now call terrorism.
What changed on 9/11 was that future risk became history. As far as
my book idea was concerned, I was unblocked: no longer would I have
to posit future doom, since now we were living it. The problem since
then has been catching up with its constant unfolding. We are racing
an appalling progression of disaster because the fundamental ideas
and instincts of our political regime and its broader culture are
so dangerously dysfunctional. Not only is terrorism history now; so
too is war in Iraq and elsewhere, so too is the endgame Israel is
waging, so too is the worldwide class war, so too is global warming,
so too are the dark ages sought by the self-blinkered religious right.
Even more theoretical problems have been advancing as well, like
declining oil supplies, growing population, and what happens when
big chunks of the underdeveloped regions turn into major consumers.
And we got a taste of what our inability to handle risk feels like
with Katrina, also history.

I keep thinking I have something distinctive to say about issues
like those. And I figure the blog is practice writing for writing
that book I've never been able to buckle down on. So I keep plugging
away. Seems like it's important enough to do, and I'm lucky that I
can afford to invest the time. But if the blog is testimony to one
thing it's that war knocks you out of normal life. That's one more
reason to stand against war. As much as I'd rather work at building
things, sometimes it's more important just to stop tearing them down.

The Un-American Century

Having recently finished Kevin Phillips' American Theocracy,
the following decline-and-fall quote kind of jumped out at me from
Tom Engelhardt's "Playing the Destabilization Card at Home and Abroad"
dispatch:

In one of his recent commentaries, historian
Immanuel
Wallerstein pointed out that the "American Century," proclaimed by
Time and Life Magazine owner Henry Luce in 1943, lasted
far less than the expected hundred years. Now, the question -- and
except for a few "declinist" scholars like Wallerstein, it would have
been an unimaginable one as recently as 2003 -- is: "Whose century is
the twenty-first century?" His grim answer: It will be the century of
"multi-polar anarchy and wild economic fluctuations."

The Phillips book focuses on three prominent factors on the US
political landscape that he sees as certain indicators, perhaps
even as causes, of American decline: oil, religion, and finance.
Citing one of his previous books, we can add growing inequality to
that list. He goes back and looks at three previous world powers,
finding analogus declines. The previous empires were Spain (16th
century), Holland (17-18th century), and Britain (19th century).
Oil figures into this equation as the energy source that built
America's wealth and made its rise to world power possible. Coal
fired Britain's empire in much the same way; the Dutch ascended
on wind, both powering their ships around the world and their
windmills at home. Spain's wealth, of course, was obtained the
old fashioned way: by plundering the New World.

Religion seems to be the hubris of empire, something the ruling
classes indulge in as they try to show that their ascendancy was
blessed by God, something right and noble. But it also leads to a
dumbing down, which seems to be a popular stance as decline sets
in. The religion sections are the book's weakest, not because he's
on the wrong track so much as he gets distracted along the way,
spending a lot of time on voting patterns in the US and making
far too facile generalizations elsewhere. Still, Lloyd George is
pretty good evidence for his argument that Britain was deluded by
religious paroxysms as it fell into decline.

Phillips is stronger on finance, although this combines several
different issues. One is how the rich come to view moneymaking as
a goal in itself, and this takes over, starving the manufacturing
or agriculture or trading or whatever a nation's original sources
of wealth were. Another is how as real wealth creation declines,
increased debt provides a temporary illusion of wealth. But debt
functions in several different ways depending on who owes what to
whom. The massive growth of consumer debt in the US is something
new: basically a way for the rich to keep getting richer without
the lower classes quite realizing how much they're paying for it.

Wallerstein's own dissection of US prospects up to 2025:

The United States on top? There are three reasons to doubt
this. The first, an economic reason, is the fragility of the
U.S. dollar as the sole reserve currency in the world-economy. The
dollar is sustained now by massive infusions of bond purchases by
Japan, China, Korea, and other countries. It is highly unlikely that
this will continue. When the dollar falls dramatically, it may
momentarily increase the sale of manufactured goods, but the United
States will lose its command on world wealth and its ability to expand
the deficit without serious immediate penalty. The standard of living
will fall and there will be an influx of new reserve currencies,
including the euro and the yen.

The second reason is military. Both Afghanistan and especially Iraq
have demonstrated in the last few years that it is not enough to have
airplanes, ships, and bombs. A nation must also have a very large land
force to overcome local resistance. The United States does not have
such a force, and will not have one, due to internal political
reasons. Hence, it is doomed to lose such wars.

The third reason is political. Nations throughout the world are
drawing the logical conclusion that they can now defy the United
States politically. Take the latest instance: The Shanghai Cooperation
Organization, which brings together Russia, China, and four Central
Asian republics, is about to expand to include India, Pakistan,
Mongolia, and Iran. Iran has been invited at the very moment that the
United States is trying to organize a worldwide campaign against the
regime. The Boston Globe has called this correctly "an anti-Bush
alliance" and a "tectonic shift in geopolitics."

One can quibble on details. In particular, military power these
days is mostly unusable. Its use is not possible unless first you
are able to demonize some enemy, which is hard to do, especially as
more countries become democratic, respect human rights, are open to
free trade, have negligible military forces, and no foreign ambitions.
Moreover, the real damage that any war causes is such that it doesn't
take a lot of deterrent threat to keep even the US at bay. What Iraq
proves is that even an apparently toothless nation can be more than
you want to bite off.

Englehardt started with a long review of the renovated cold war
against Russia, then looked at numerous other examples where the
order of the day seems to be to destabilize the world -- not just
other countries but nature itself. His conclusion is worth quoting:

For George W. Bush and his top officials, taking the long-term heat
on [global warming] probably isn't really an issue. They have the
mentality not just of gamblers but of looters and in a couple of
years, if worse comes to worse, they can head for Crawford or Wyoming
or estates and ranches elsewhere to hunt fowl and drink mai tais. It's
the rest of us, and especially our children and grandchildren, who
will still be here on this destabilized, energy-hungry planet without
an air conditioner in sight.

One thing neither Phillips nor Wallerstein get far into is how much
future stress is possible, therfore how fast things we take for granted
may collapse. As I see it, the only way to cope with such stress is to
develop a firm foundation for cooperation. To do that we need to put
behind us such obsessions with power, with the ability of one country
to dominate others, to enforce its favoritism. Wallerstein's "multi-polar
anarchy" is what you get when no state can project its dominion, and
that does seem likely as the world grows more unconquerable. The open
question is whether such a world devolves into chaos or develops into
community based on mutual respect -- in other words, whether we cling
to the failed tools of power or grow beyond such suspicions. Either
way the next hundred years will be an Un-American Century.

Recycled Goods #33: July 2006

Recycled Goods keeps rolling along: column #33 has just been posted at
Static
Multimedia. Usual collection of a little bit of everything. If
anything a little broader selection of everything -- soundtracks,
children's music, and comedy records are not things I normally cover --
with a nice bump in world music, rather loosely defined. This makes
33 columns, 1382 albums, since I started in early 2003.

Turn Left in Mexico

One thing most Americans have trouble understanding is that the
election of leftist, progressive political leaders in the developing
world is a good thing -- for them, of course, but also for us -- by
which I mean most Americans. This quite simply is because what poor
nations need more than anything else is political leadership that
represents poor people and works toward relieving their poverty and
opening up opportunities for the poor to live healthier, happier,
more productive, more responsible lives. We face a basic choice
here: either we welcome the poor into our world, a world which is
relatively well off, safe and orderly, or we face an endless fight
to keep the excluded from tearing us down, one that bruises us as
well as those we put down. Of course, the same can be said within
America, and indeed that's a good reason for supporting leftists
here, but worldwide the disparity is much starker, and therefore
more urgent -- especially as the world shrinks and its people
collide.

These thoughts are occasioned by the election in Mexico, as yet
undecided. Mexico is a country with a large number of poor and a
small number of rich -- often very rich. The latter are politically
connected to government systems which are severely corrupt, which
serves the rich well enough and keeps the poor powerless. Much has
been written about why some nations are rich and others are poor
and why the latter tend to stay locked in their poverty, but one
common trait stands out: poor countries suffer from corruption. It
should be easy to understand why this is so: wealth is produced by
effective labor -- labor that is skilled, earnest, dilligent, and
applied to genuinely useful tasks. Honesty is an essential trait of
such labor. Corruption subverts honesty, perverts purpose, steals
value. In hopelessly corrupt societies, which include large parts
of Africa these days, there is no incentive to work, since all one
produces is likely to be stolen.

Of course, there's more to building wealth -- natural resources
are a big help -- and it takes time to build up the institutional
infrastructures of dynamic economies: education, finance, law, a
reasonable mix of regulation. In capitalist societies there has
always been a tension between incentives that reward productivity
and the sense of overall fairness. The left hasn't necessarily
gotten this balance right -- the Communist regimes tended to kill
incentive and opportunity by enforcing strict and often misguided
planning -- but in nations like Mexico almost any move to the
left is likely to be a positive correction.

Americans tend to think of Mexico in two contexts. One is the
effect that NAFTA has, which mostly favors business both in the
US and Mexico, and hurts labor. The business benefit is that it
provides larger markets, although that is partly cancelled out
when one country has products that overwhelm the other's market --
Mexico's farm industry has taken a beating from US agribusiness.
US labor is also hurt by having to compete with cheaper Mexican
labor, while any hypothetical benefit to Mexican labor rarely
materializes due to the corruption and powerlessness there. The
other context is illegal immigration, where Mexicans enter the
US to work in low skill, low paid jobs. This also has the effect
of depressing the US job market, while it leaves Mexican laborers
without legal protection.

The people who benefit from NAFTA and illegal immigration, on
both sides of the border, are disproportionately the rich, while
those who pay are predominately the poor. The combined effect is
to make the rich richer and leave the poor further behind -- a
disturbing trend on both sides of the border. This effect has
only increased during the Fox presidency, and would continue if
the conservatives manage to rip off this election. Only a shift
of power to the left is likely to make any difference here.

One reason Americans get so confused here is that they haven't
noticed the central fact of US foreign policy, which is that "we"
no longer includes the overwhelming majority of the American people.
US politics tends to serve its special interest groups, and the
dominant special interest groups for US foreign policy are the
businesses and investors that profit from maintaining corrupt
regimes abroad. And by the way, those people include the foreign
investors who own an ever increasing share of American assets,
bought with America's trade imbalances and sheltered by our low
tax rates. So US foreign policy has little to do with what's in
the best interest of most Americans. And this has been going on
for a long time: the Cold War that had us so worried had as much
or more to do with the class struggle, with business vs. labor,
as with Russian expansionism or totalitarianism. That's why the
US was so eager to support right-wing crooks throughout the
Third World. That's also why the US is held in such low repute
by leftists around the world. That curse will only change when
America itself shifts to the left. But meanwhile, a win in
Mexico would be a good start -- for us all.

Michael Tatum asked me about Kinsley KS. I wrote the following back
in a letter, and thought I'd keep it here for future reference:

I'm very familiar with Kinsley. Probably been there more than a hundred
times. One of my mother's brothers was killed in a car wreck when I was
two. His widow got a job teaching grade school, mostly 4th grade, in
Kinsley. They had three children, 7-10 years older than me. When I was
a child, we went to visit them at least every other month, sometimes
more often. I spent a week-plus there one summer. My cousins were major
influences on me. They've scattered widely, but we're still close. My
aunt remarried much later, hooking up with a Disciples minister she
had dated before marrying my uncle. They moved to Newton, 25 miles
north of Wichita, where she still lives. She's 91, the last living
member of my mother's generation. I've been through Kinsley a couple
of times 2-3 years ago. Looks much like it did back in the '60s, but
much more run down. Some towns in southwest Kansas have been growing
lately, almost exclusively because of feed lots and meat packing. That
hasn't touched Kinsley at all.

I have another connection to the area, through my father. His birth
certificate reads Spearville, KS -- a small town a little more than
half way down US-56 from Kinsley to Dodge City -- but the homestead
was actually north and west of there, in Hodgeman County. The first
several generations of Hulls are buried just north of Spearville --
not sure of the exact names and dates, but one came to homestead in
the 1870s from Pennsylvania. My father had a couple of uncles still
in the area when I was young, and a cousin who still lives in Dodge
City, where she taught grade school for many years. I went back to
a couple of those old farms 3 years ago -- houses I remember as a
child had decayed into ruins. Spent a lot of time in Dodge also.

Kinsley is a farm town, about 2500 people at its peak, seat of
Edwards County. The Arkansas River bypasses it from south to east,
staying a mile or two out of town. A small creek runs west to east
through the town, just south of 10th St., known to the rest of the
world as US-50. US-50 and US-56 merge on the west end of Kinsley,
combining for the next leg west to Dodge City, another 40 miles.
US-50 heads straight east, toward Hutchinson, Emporia, the East
Coast. US-56 follows the river to Great Bend, then tacks east.
There's a marker where the highways meet noting that New York
and San Francisco are equal distances away (1561 miles).

The land around Kinsley is shortgrass prairie. They grow wheat
and alfalfa, raise cattle. Don't recall much irrigation. As you
go from east to west in Kansas, the elevation rises and it gets
drier. Beyond Kinsley, especially to the south, not much grows
without irrigation. The Hugoton-Anadarko gas field pays for the
irrigation, and the Ogalala Aquifer suffers: the latter will be
dry in 20-50 years, the land returning to prairie in the north
and scrub desert in the south.

Oil on the Brain

In his book American Theocracy, Kevin Phillips makes a case
that oil is the main issue that drove Bush and Cheney into Iraq. The
case is somewhat complicated, but the following long quote (pp. 76-78)
lays out much of it:

The oil maps, in short, had long been the ones that mattered. For
the U.S. and British oil companies, losing these concessions to the
nationalizations of the 1970s was infuriating. The irony with respect
to Iraq was that for one reasons or another, the 1970s were the only
decade of heavy pumping and large oil revenues. Production had been
kept low during the glutted thirties, and it then stagnated during
World War II. By 1948 Iraq's commercial production was just
one-seventh that of Iran and one-sixth that of Saudi Arabia. Then
between 1980 and 1988, the drawn-out Iran-Iraq War curbed output in
both countries. Next came the Gulf War in 1991, followed by the
effects of United Nations sanctions from 1990 until the subsequent
invasion of Iraq in 2003. Over the last decade or so this chronology
of Iraq's surprisingly limited oil production has become relevant
again for a simple reason: given that relatively little of Iraq's oil
has been pumped, most of it is still in the ground.

As the dust of the first Gulf War settled, oil companies from Texas
to China began wondering which among them would gain access when the
United Nations sanctions were lifted. By 1995 The Wall Street
Journal and other publications were reporting the American fear:
that if Saddam Hussein could escape UN sanctions and give Iraq's lush
concessions to non-Anglo-American companies, he could realign the
global oil business.

In the meantime, UN sanctions were essential in preventing Iraq
from exporting oil beyond the middling amount allowed and also in
preventing competitive foreign investments. So long as the United
States and Britain could keep these sanctions in place, using
allegations concerning weapons of mass destruction, Saddam could not
implement his own plan to extend large-scale oil concessions
(estimated to be worth $1.1 trillion) to French, Russian, Chinese, and
other oil companies. Most analysts concluded that he hoped to enlist
those three nations, which had seats on the UN Security Council, to
get the sanctions lifted.

As the buzzards circled, Iraq became the prize piece needed to
complete three interrelated Washington jigsaw puzzles: the rebuilding
of Anglo-American oil-company reserves, transformation of Iraq into an
oil protectorate-cum-military base, and reinforcement of the global
hegemony of the U.S. dollar. This brings us to the next critical set
of maps, the ones used in 2001 by Vice President Dick Cheney's
National Energy Policy Development Group to mesh America's energy
needs with a twenty-first-century national-security blueprint. This
group pursued a mandate, in collaboration with the National Security
Council, to deal with rogue states and "actions regarding the capture
of new and existing oil and gas fields."

Never intended for public scrutiny, the three Middle East maps and
their supporting documents came to light in the summer of 2003 under a
federal court order. The most pertinent displayed Iraq's oil fields,
pipelines, and refineries, with a supporting list of "Foreign Suitors
for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts." As of 2001, more than sixty firms from
thirty countries -- most prominently France, Russia, and China, but
also India, Japan, Indonesia, Canada, and Germany -- had projects
either agreed upopn or under discussion with Baghdad. Nothing could
have been less popular in Washington or London.

Canadian writer Linda McQuaig of the Toronto Star offered
this juicy description: "The southwest is neatly divided, for
instance, into nine 'Exploration Blocks.' Stripped of political
trappings, this map shows a naked Iraq, with only its ample natural
assets in view. It's like a supermarket meat chart, which identifies
various parts of a slab of beef so customers can see the most
desirable cuts. . . . Block 1 might be the striploin, Block 2 and
Block 3 are perhaps some juicy tenderloin, but Block 8 -- ahh, that
could be the filet mignon." The French oil giant Total was to get the
twenty-five-billion-barrel Majnoon oil field: "there goes the filet
mignon into the mouths of the French."

What these maps left unsaid was how relatively untouched -- or at
least untapped -- the Iraqi fields were. But Cheney's team would
presumably have studied the history of Iraqi oil output. Since the
turn of the twentieth century, later explained Leonardo Maugeri, a
senior vice president at the Italian oil and gas company ENI, "only
2,300 wells have been drilled in Iraq, compared with about 1 million
in Texas. A large part of the country -- the western desert area -- is
still mainly unexplored. Iraq has never implemented advanced
technologies -- like 3-D seismic exploration techniques or deep and
horizontal drilling -- to find or tap new wells.Of more than 80
oilfields discovered in Iraq, only about 21 have been at least
partially developed. . . . [I]t is realistic to assume that Iraq has
far more oil reserves than documented so far -- probably about 200
billion barrels more. Not a few geologists suspected that the former
Mesopotamia might have more left than Saudi Arabia.

Fadel Gheit, a prominent New York-based oil analyst, used words
more appropriate to a movie publicist: "Think of Iraq as virgin
territory. . . . This is bigger than anything Exxon is involved in
currently. . . . It is the superstar of the future. That's why Iraq
becomes the most sought-after real estate on the face of the
earth. . . . Think of Iraq as a military base with a very large oil
reserve underneath. . . . You can't ask for better than that."

It takes a fair amount of effort to unpack all this. It could be
stated a good deal more clearly. The underlying argument is Phillips'
assertions that:

US identity as a world power is tied to oil, for better and
for worse. The US became a world power because we had a lot of oil
and were able to build a more efficient, more productive economy
powered by oil than any other country. (Our predecessor as a world
power was Great Britain, whose coal-powered economy was eclipsed
by our use of oil.) Many effects follow from this, including the
such major structures as our emphasis on cars and roads, and the
political identity many of us assume between our interests and the
interests of US oil companies.

Since 1970, when US oil production peaked, we have had to
increasingly turn abroad for oil to maintain our economic position
as a world power. By now this position has perhaps irretrievably
eroded, lending to our desperation. As worldwide oil production
peaks then declines, our position will decline further. Thus far
we have largely been able to maintain our illusions by borrowing,
by selling, and by projecting non-economic substitutes for power
like awe-inspiring weaponry. On the other hand, the US economy
and its image of power is on the verge of collapse, which could
be triggered by any number of events. One of particular import
to US oil companies is the general recognition that reserves are
overstated and diminishing. Iraqi oil would help in that regard.
Another is the fear that the world oil market might switch from
dollars to euros. The requirement that oil sales be denominated
in dollars creates demand for dollars abroad, which props up the
value of the dollar.

A number of other crises are possible, and Phillips explores
several of them later in the book, especially in the sections on
debt. The need to demonstrate the shock and awe of US military
power also has psychological roots in this same economic fear of
falling. The critical time period for most of these issues was
the 1970s. That's when US balance of payments shifted negative,
when oil imports rose over 50%, when we felt the first severe
oil price shocks as OPEC was first able to exert some control
over the market. That's also when the real wages of US workers
started to decline. Americans have been in denial ever since.
That was when Jimmy Carter promised he'd never lie to us, so he
was voted out of office. Carter was replaced by Ronald Reagan,
who told us what we wanted to hear, then by Bush, Clinton, and
another Bush, in an upward spiral of mendacity. The second part
of Phillips' book is about the growth of the religious right
and its ideological pursuit of blind ignorance. Fits right in.

Phillips cites a long history of US Middle East policy based
on oil, starting with Roosevelt's embrace of Saudi Arabia. British
policy in the region, which we happily inherited warts and all,
had been even more explicitly oil driven. Regarding the 1990-91
Gulf War, Phillips writes (pp. 80-81):

Once the United States decided to eject Iraq from Kuwait, however,
Saddam's rationales bdcame irrelevant. When President bush mobilized
American forces, he commented matter-of-factly that "our jobs, our way
of life, our own freedom and the freedom of friendly countries around
the world would all suffer if control of the world's great oil
reserves fell into the hands of Saddam Hussein." Secretary of Defense
Cheney was even more vociferous: "Once he [Saddam] acquired Kuwait and
deployed an army as large as the one he possesses," Cheney argued, the
Iraqi leader was "in a position to be able to dictate the future of
worldwide energy policy, and that gave him a stranglehold on our
economy." Compared with the pretenses of 2002-2003, these statements
were relatively candid.

Still, occasional candor popped up even then (p. 83):

Occasionally, the blurring of distinctions between energy,
antiterror, and military considerations in U.S. policy making was
obliquely acknowledged. In 2003 former White House speechwriter David
Frum wrote in his Bush political biography, The Right Man, that
"the war on terror" was designed to "bring new stability to the most
vicious and violent quadrant of the Earth -- and new prosperity to us
all, by securing the world's largest pool of oil.

Again, on Iraq (p. 93):

From the U.S. standpoint, Iraq by 2002 and 2003 was a rogue nation
not just because of hidden weapons or attempts to undercut the United
States in the oil arena but also because Saddam Hussein sought to
unhorse the dollar in the global financial markets. Closely on the
heels of the euro's 1999 introduction, Baghdad had started trading its
oil for euros, not dollars, a policy that became official in late
2000. There are no records, but Cheney's reported early 2001 plotting
against OPEC may well have touched on the related peril to the
dollar. Indeed, shortly after Iraq was occupied, U.S. administrators
put it back on the dollar standard for its oil transactions in June
2003.

Many people have trouble buying the primacy of the oil rationale
for the invasion, including me. I think there are several reasons
for this:

Most Americans are oil consumers, not producers, so we
benefit from stable free markets. The war has clearly disrupted
those arguments, resulting in much higher consumer prices. So
since we didn't benefit, how could oil have been a reason? Part
of the reason is that even though the oil companies didn't get
everything they wanted, they still got record profits.

We tend to recognize that the colonial era is dead, a
victim of the progress of history, which makes invade-and-seize
a losing bet. That's probably the smart position, but it fails
to note that the post-colonial period has seen development of
new methods for exploiting former colonies, and these can still
be quite profitable.

Oil itself is flamable, and as such relatively easy to
sabotage, which means that any sort of armed occupation aimed
at stealing oil resources is especially vulnerable. This point,
of course, is much more obvious now than before Bush invaded
Iraq.

In other words, the reasons for doubting the oil explanation are
the sort of things that would dissuade reasonable people from such
a venture. However, Bush, Cheney, Rice, et al. -- all three of those
weaned in the oil business, even if none were much good at it -- did
just that.

Scraps from previous drafts:

The first problem that most of us have with the oil rationale for
the invasion of Iraq is that we think of Americans as consumers of
oil. It seems pretty obvious that the best deal for consumers would
be for the oil producing parts of the globe to have stable, peaceful
governments connected to free markets. In such markets, it shouldn't
matter at all which companies process the oil: in the end, the oil
will go to whoever can best afford it, which isn't a bad deal for
most American consumers. On the other hand, by disrupting supplies
and destabilizing the region the Bush occupation of Iraq has only
served to drive prices up, hurting most Americans, and for that
matter consumers all around the world. The problem in all this is
that the Bush administration doesn't represent American consumers.
It represents the oil companies, about as self-consciously and
solo-mindedly as any set of politicans can. The oil companies do
benefit from the price run the war has caused, but as Phillips
points out, they have bigger problems: contracting oil reserves,
which is the point of Iraq.

The second problem we have is that we tend to accept the trend
toward nationalizing oil companies, which started in Mexico in the
'30s and continued through Venezuela, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and
so forth, so we don't expect any scheme to reverse the tide of
history and restore US ownership of foreign oil. As such, even
a pro-American government in Iraq is unlikely to privatize its
oil resources -- certainly that's not a proposition that most
Iraqis are inclined to favor, so you can see why it's best not to
bring that up. (Even Paul Bremer drew the line there, as he tried
to privatize everything else, perhaps to see how much he could get
away with. The economic damage that ensued went hand in hand with
the armed resistance.) But major oil companies are used to sending
royalty checks to governments as well as private investors: what
they want are deals to develop and exploit oil fields, the sort
of deal that satisfies both the nations, more or less, and the
companies.

To make sense of this, you need to fill in some background. The
first big point is Phillips' argument that the basis of US power
in the world is, and always has been, oil. He discusses two major
precedents: Dutch mastery of wind power which gave them advantages
in shipbuilding, trading and manufacturing that allowed them to
supplant the Spanish in the 17th century, and Britain's more famous
19th century empire, built largely on power from coal. Phillips
argues that the US ascendency over Britain was based on cheap and
plentiful oil, highly developed by the first World War. Perhaps
even more significantly, the US has started to lose power as we
run out of domestic oil -- some indicators of this include that
real wages of American workers and the balance of trade started
to slip as the US started heading down the backside slope of the
peak oil curve. In its ascendancy, the US built a vast economy
designed to burn oil. That structure persists even as the oil we
depend on becomes harder and more expensive to obtain.

So Phillips is arguing first that oil is the lifeblood of the
US economy and the empire built on it. The flip side of this is
that even foreign sources of oil have peaked, or will soon.

Music: Current count 12057 [12020] rated (+37), 895 [919] unrated (-24).
As predicted, I made a hard push on Recycled Goods this past week, and
that pushed the rated count up. Didn't get much in the mail either, so
I got the unrated count down under 900. A week ago I was thinking that
would turn out to be impossible. Still, it's far from secure. Recycled
Goods is done. Just waiting for edits to send it off to Static, so it
should be up sometime this week. In fact, got enough Recycled done that
I have 28 reviews left over for August, about as large a carryover as
I've ever had. So the focus the next two weeks will be on Jazz CG. A
lot needs to be done there.

Charles Brown: Alone at the Piano (1989-94 [2004],
Savoy Jazz): Informality was always the key to his style, just a
soft-spoken line, then a little flourish of piano, the essence of
a dark, weary, smokey after-hours joint; his fifty years of albums
are mostly interchangeable, but never so informal as on these solo
air shots. B+(*)

Twenty Twenty: The Essential T Bone Burnett
(1976-2003 [2006], Columbia/Legacy, 2CD): A singer-songwriter
with a knack for modestly rootsy music and a tendency to preach,
the need for forty songs stretches his five-album-plus catalog,
with the relatively recent The Criminal Under My Own Hat
(1992) plumbed for nine -- scattered they stand out, an extra
sonic edge that made Burnett more successful as a producer.
B+(**)

The Johnny Cash Children's Album (1971-73 [2006],
Columbia/Legacy): I have no special insight into this one's utility,
but it sounds like Cash, most of the widely scattered songs aren't
pointed plainly at children, I've heard "Old Shep" on a comp before,
and I got a chuckle out of the previously unreleased "Why Is a Fire
Engine Red." B

The Very Best of DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince
(1986-93 [2006], Jive/Legacy): Jeff Townes' scratches seem as corny
now as Will Smith's standup, and they're dated now to the stretch
between old style and gangsta when rap threatened to break out into
the mainstream; it still has that loose-limbed goofiness, especially
in the Summertime. B+(***)

Keep on Truckin': The Very Best of Hot Tuna
(1969-78 [2006], RCA/Legacy): Jefferson Steamship Inc.'s spinoff
for the ever popular Grateful Dead niche market recycles old blues --
Robert Johnson, Gary Davis, Lightnin' Hopkins, the ever-dependable
"Traditional" -- while draining them of pain and intensity, as if
the secret to retro is nonchalance. B

The Worst of Jefferson Airplane (1965-69 [2006],
RCA/Legacy): The inclusion of their hits suggests that the title
was commissioned, if not necessarily compiled, as irony, but they
were sloppy enough, and perverse enough, you never can be sure.
Had they waited another year or two -- this adds two tracks to a
1970 comp -- their intent might have been clearer, as they did
get a lot worse. Stuck in their time warp, I doubt that anyone
not yet in their fifties can glean that this was once an important
band. B+(**)

Cheikh Lô: Lamp Fall (2005 [2006], World
Circuit/Nonesuch): Originally from Burkina Faso, Lô is a one-man
melting pot of West African influences from Mali to Senegal,
plus some stray bits from Cuba and Brasil -- gives him a sound
that is both generic and cosmopolitan, often on the verge of
tying it all together, but sometimes it's hard to tell.
B+(**)

Lulendo: Angola (2005 [2006], Buda Musique): A
singer-songwriter from Angola, plays guitar and likembe, based in
Paris since 1982, sings in four languages, picks up stylistic bits
from all over the map; used to be world music came from somewhere,
but this goes everywhere, cancelling itself out.
B

Fred Neil (1967 [2006], Water): A singer-songwriter
before before they came into vogue, with a guitar and a deep, rich
voice that takes some getting used to; wrote everything here, even
"Everybody's Talkin'," which Harry Nilsson covered for Midnight
Cowboy and parlayed into a top ten hit; Neil remained obscure,
his few semi-legendary albums justly prized by obsessive reissue
vendors; inspirational verse: "you know they'll probably drop the
atom bomb the day my ship comes in."
A-

Everybody's Talkin': The Very Best of Harry Nilsson
(1967-77 [2006], RCA/Legacy): At 14 cuts, 44:57, this doesn't push
its luck; most are pop gems, evidence of genius with no obvious game
plan other than indulging his every whim, but even the hits are out
of sorts, off in some other world.
A-

Harry Nilsson: Son of Schmilsson (1972-73 [2006],
RCA/Legacy): Haven't heard the progenitor, reportedly his masterpiece;
this seems typically scattered, with a couple of clear-headed rockers
rising from the string-drenched matrix and sing-alongs like "I'd Rather
Be Dead" ("than wet the bed"); the bonus tracks mostly are. Seems like
his average album, but as usual it's hard to tell. B+(*)

Harry Nilsson: A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night
(1973 [2006], RCA/Legacy): Old songs, wrapped in strings and sung with
remarkable delicacy -- never realized that "Makin' Whoopee!" could offer
such scant hint of fun; six bonus tracks are par for the course. C

Putumayo Presents: ¡Baila! A Latin Dance Party
(1996-2005 [2006], Putumayo World Music): As a sucker for groove,
this seems functional enough, but not all Latin music is the same,
and rummaging from East Harlem to Buenos Aires to Los Angeles to
Stockholm doesn't improve the odds of fitting it all together.
B

Putumayo Presents: Paris (1995-2005 [2006], Putumayo
World Music): La nouvelle génération du chanson français,
which means no one you're likely to hear of -- excepting Keren Ann,
who was just passing through from Israel -- but that won't matter:
as long as the food and wine are up to spec, they're atmosphere.
B+(*)

The Collected Works of the Roches (1978-92
[2003], Rhino/Warner Brothers): My first experience with them
was a night wandering around the Village with Bob Christgau
and Carola Dibbell. They were playing in a bar, and Bob talked
us in, doubling their crowd if not their door. Their first
album came out soon afterwards, but it took me a decade or
more before I warmed to it. This starts with four songs from
that album, and ends with two from A Dove -- their one
album I fell in love with instantly. In between the songs are
weaker and more idiosyncratic, but the music gradually takes
shape. That series of albums has always escaped me. Thought
this might excerpt them to good effect, but they still seem
unapproachable. Mostly. B+

Candy Licker: The Sex & Soul of Marvin Sease
(1994-2005 [2006], Jive/Legacy): A southern soulman retro enough to
wind up in Malaco's blues stable, Sease's typical cornbread is tasty
enough, but his crunk is mere novelty; of course, it doesn't help
that this one-label comp didn't bother to license the notorious
10-minute original of the title song; instead we get a sequel and
a live remake. B+(**)

Wayfaring Strangers: Ladies From the Canyon
(1969-76 [2006], Numero Group): A bevy of Joni Mitchell wannabes,
mostly one-shot obscurities doing original material -- except for
a "Sister Morphine" that feels out of place, not that any would
be right; that the sharpest chords are closest to the mark says
something, like that Mitchell herself was unique.
B

Funky Beat: The Best of Whodini (1983-96 [2006],
Jive/Legacy): A second tier '80s rap group from Brooklyn -- only two
cuts here come after 1987 -- and they sound like it: hard old style
beats and scratches, comps borrowed from Afrika Bambaataa, lyrics
that don't aspire to be more than functional; after all, their peak
was called "Five Minutes of Funk." B+(**)

Robin Williams: A Night at the Met (1986 [2006],
Columbia/Legacy): After some foreplay about Reagan and Khadafi --
check the date -- this turns into everything you ever wanted to
know about sex, and then some; some insight, too, like "the first
purpose of alcohol is to make English your second goddamn language
. . . the third purpose of alcohol is to bring out the asshole in
everybody." B+(**)

Women of Substance (1945-2002 [2003], Savoy Jazz):
Useless cross-generational label comp, with six cuts from the old
Savoy catalog, three from Muse, one from Denon, three from Savoy
redux -- the two latest from the skinny-voiced Carol Welsman; high
point is Houston Person's sax solo for Etta Jones.
B-

Zanzibara 1: Ikhwani Safaa Musical Club (2004-05 [2006],
Buda Musique):
The 21 volumes of this label's Éthiopiques series provide a
unique, extraordinarily detailed survey of one small, little known
pocket of African music. One wishes someone would take on a major
center with comparable dilligence -- Nigeria, Congo, Senegal, South
Africa, even Mali -- but for a second series they've again aimed
small, starting with the small trading island off the coast of East
Africa. As I understand it, Werner Graebner's series will expand to
cover Swahili popular music from Somalia to Mozambique, but the
starting point is the island, for chronological reasons as much as
any other. Ikhwani Safaa Musical Club was founded in 1905, a band
first then a building. I'm not sure how the next hundred years
unfold, but the Arab-influenced taraab of the current group is a
venerable style, with its oud, accordion, strings and percussion.
It is a music of broad contours, its gentle sway dominating the
marginal beats.
B+(***)

Zanzibara 2: L'Âge d'Or du Taraab de Mombasa (1965-75
[2006], Buda Musique): The Arabic influence seems stronger here, most
likely the age of the recordings, even though the music is modern enough
to be sung in Swahili rather than Arabic; many of the various musicians
come from Kenya or Tanzania, suggesting that Mombasa had a cosmopolitan
attraction before it got wrecked by war lords. B+(***)

Jazz Prospecting (CG #10, Part 9)

Spent this last week working on Recycled Goods, so not much new
prospecting to show here. July's Recycled Goods column is more/less
done now -- just need to go over some edits and hand it over to
Static for posting. I'm far enough into the jazz prospecting cycle
at this point that I should be able to pull a Jazz Consumer Guide
together. That will be the focus of the next two weeks. Doubt that
I have more than twenty unplayed jazz records, but I have a good
deal more on the shelf pending replay, so that's where most of the
action will be.

Tsegué-Maryam Guèbro: Éthiopiques 21: Ethiopia Song
(1963-96 [2006], Buda Musique):
Born 1923, the daughter of a noted Ethiopian writer. Like her father,
she was educated in Switzerland, learning a half-dozen languages, as
well as piano. After the Fascists conquered Ethiopia, she was deported
to an island near Sardinia. After the war she returned to her studies
in Cairo. In 1948 she entered a monstery, becoming a nun. She later
made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, staying there as an interpreter for
the Ethiopian Orthodox Patriarch. She recorded two solo piano albums
in Germany in 1963, another in 1970, one more in 1996. She also cut
an album of liturgical music where she played organ, but this album
just collects her solo piano music. It strikes me as neither the
classical music of her teachers nor the native music of her country,
and it certainly isn't jazz. Mostly small figures, delicately played.
Several songs refer to rivers, reflected in the easy flow and quiet
contemplation of the music.
A-

Thomas Strønen: Parish (2005 [2006], ECM): One of
many Scandinavian drummers I've noted several times. Most straddle
over into rock, but Strønen's metajazz interests run more toward
miniaturist electronica. This is a typical acoustic jazz quartet,
but cut small and bleak: short pieces, small figures, lots of open
space. Fredrik Ljungkvist mostly sticks to clarinet, keeping to a
softer focus than his tenor sax. Bobo Stenson plays piano and Mats
Eilertsen bass. I find this very attractive -- not least the drums.
[B+(***)]

Sugar Pie DeSanto: Refined Sugar (2005 [2006],
Jasman): Born Umpeylia Marsema Balinton in 1935, she got part of
her name when Johnny Otis marketed her as Little Miss Sugar Pie
in 1955. She recorded for Chess from 1959-66, then vanished until
1993 when she recorded the first of what now are four albums for
Jasman. Her voice has deepened, developing some real grit and a
fierce growl, and it carries what otherwise is a classic sounding
but unexceptional r&b record.
B+(*)

Art Blakey: Holiday for Skins (1958 [2006], Blue
Note): One of Blakey's many multi-drum experiments, following
Drum Suite and Orgy in Rhythm, this one has three
trap sets, seven Latino percussionists (including Ray Barretto),
Donald Byrd trumpet, Ray Bryant piano, and Wendell Marshall bass.
Doesn't seem like the drummers -- Philly Joe Jones and Art Taylor
are the others -- ever get on the same wavelength as the Latinos,
but the latter are happy to play along with anyone or anything.
Especially Ray Bryant, who contributes some tasty moments.
B+(*)

Jackie McLean: It's Time (1964 [2006], Blue Note):
The alto saxist set his destination for out the year before in two
remarkable albums with trombonist Grachan Moncur, but this one is a
bit more equivocal. The group veterans lean back toward hard bop,
but McLean's pushes them hard, even getting some abstract comping
from Herbie Hancock. The newcomers are bassist Cecil McBee and
trumpeter Charles Tolliver, who writes three pieces, including the
soft closer.
B+(***)

Andrew Hill: Pax (1965 [2006], Blue Note): Now
that Hill's lived long enough to have become a legend, his old
(and now new) label is finally bringing his old catalog back in
print. This session has always had problems seeing the light of
day: the original was shelved until 1975 when it finally came
out as part of a garbage collection project. It isn't garbage.
It should have sold fine just on names -- Joe Henderson, Freddie
Hubbard, Richard Davis, Joe Chambers -- but it's actually better
than that. Hill's piano is always into something surprising,
and the horns take the hint and play much further out than
expected.
A-

Serge Chaloff: Boston Blow-Up! (1955 [2006], Capitol
Jazz): A hard swinging baritone saxophonist with a bop edge, Chaloff cut
his teeth in Woody Herman's Second Herd, then moved on -- actually, was
thrown out, for following Charlie Parker's habits too literally --
to cut a handful of memorable albums before he succumbed to a spinal
tumor and died at age 33. Blue Serge (1956) is his masterpiece,
a tight, elegant quartet where everything goes right, in part because
the other three players -- Sonny Clark, Leroy Vinnegar, Philly Joe
Jones -- are so dependable. This album is much sloppier but nearly
as impressive. Produced by Stan Kenton, this is a sextet with three
horns storming -- at its best the balance of raw power and feather
light touch Kenton often aimed for and rarely achieved.
A-

Lou Blackburn: The Complete Imperial Sessions
(1963 [2006], Blue Note): That would be two albums in one year with
the same lineup, including trumpeter Freddie Hill and pianist Horace
Tapscott -- not yet 30, and nowhere near as distinctive or dominant
as he became, but very solid throughout. Blackburn was a Los Angeles
trombonist without much under his own name, but these sessions are
bright, swinging hard bop, even the one released as Two-Note
Samba. Must have been a law in 1963 that everyone had to release
a samba album.
B+(***)

Gil Evans: The Complete Pacific Jazz Sessions
(1958-59 [2006], Blue Note): This marks the emergence of Evans
not just as an arranger but as an auteur, and fittingly starts
by recasting the entire jazz tradition into his deftly layered,
intricate modernism. This disc combines two albums, released
as New Bottle, Old Wine and Great Jazz Standards --
the former with more of the latter, ranging from "St. Louis
Blues" to Charlie Parker, the latter with more contemporary
fare -- not that anyone will be surprise to find "Straight No
Chaser" or "Django" there. These records have always long me
as cold, calculated, a bit cut and dry, but this time through
I'm struck by the solos on the latter half, especially Steve
Lacy and Budd Johnson.
B+(***)

Paul Motian: On Broadway Vol. 4 (2005 [2006],
Winter & Winter): A lot of packaging confusion here: front
cover reads "PAUL MOTIAN TRIO 2000+ONE ON BROADWAY VOL.4 OR
THE PAR A DOX OF CONTINU ITY" give or take some spaces. Spine
is simpler, as above. Trio 2000 + One has appeared before in
an album of that name, with Motian, bassist Larry Grenadier,
and saxophonist Chris Potter the probable trio and pianist
Masabumi Kikuchi the One. This time, however, the pianist is
replaced by vocalist Rebecca Martin on eight songs. I don't
believe that any of the three previous On Broadway
albums have vocals -- they were mostly quartets with Lovano,
Frisell and Haden -- Martin's dusky vocals are a natural here.
That piano and vocals are exclusive is a reflection of Motian's
fastidiousness -- at the risk of a bad pun, the older he gets,
the less motion he wastes. Potter, too, is a revelation --
don't recall him working much behind singers, but he's always
right on the mark here.
[A-]

Jim Black/AlasNoAxis: Dogs of Great Indifference
(2005 [2006], Winter & Winter): The pieces here have regular
rhythms with more or less fuzz, built up from bass and guitar,
around the edges, closer to experimental rock or electronica than
to postbop. The louder pieces are industrial grade, but most are
quieter. Chris Speed plays tenor sax, providing melodic variation,
or just as likely smoothing out the texture. Interesting sonically,
especially the lighter pieces, but nothing quite jumps out.
B+(**)

And these are final grades/notes on records I put back for further
listening the first time around.

Saadet Türköz: Urumchi (2005 [2006], Intakt):
Swiss-based singer, originally from East Turkestan, reverses her
migration in returning to Almaty and on to Beijing to record her
solemn, stately folk music in the ancient style, with sparse
strings, scarce drums, haunting voice.
B+(*)

Aki Takase/Lauren Newton: Spring in Bangkok (2004
[2006], Intakt): Piano and voice, the latter more instrument than
verbal -- the exception is the semi-spoken "Das Scheint Mir," in
amusingly orchestrated Deutsch. Impressed as I am by Newton's vocal
prowess, I perhaps inevitably find the piano more attractive.
B+(*)

The True Costs of Drunken Teenage Journalism

Knight Ridder, which owned the Wichita Eagle, sold itself out
recently to McClatchy Newspapers, the new owner of the Eagle. While
Knight Ridder had plenty of problems itself -- see the book by former
Eagle editor Davis Merritt, Knightfall: Knight Ridder and How the
Erosion of Newspaper Journalism Is Putting Democracy at Risk --
they've done a consistently better job of reporting from Iraq than
any other major US news organization. One always worries when one
bunch of capitalists sell out to another, richer, group -- after
all, being richer is most often a sign of being more corrupt these
days. And the general trend in media is toward concentration of
ownership with all of the political connections that implies,
and toward the propagation of the trivial. Still, the first
McClatchy byline I've noticed in the Eagle came as a shock. I
may have repressed something, but this is about as stupid as
any news article I can recall. The reporter is Ely Portillo,
and the title is "Costs of teen drinking add up to $62 billion":

Underage drinking costs Americans $62 billion every year in
injuries, deaths and lost work time, according to a tally released
Thursday. That's more than three times what the federal government had
spent on relief for Hurricanes Katrina and Rita by mid-June.

The highest costs are those associated with rapes, murders,
assaults and other violent crimes committed by underage people who
have been drinking, which add up to $34.7 billion. The second-highest
cost was drunken-driving accidents, totaling $13.5 billion.
Researchers took into account immediate costs, such as hospital
bills, and long-term damage, such as lost work hours and lowered
quality of life.

Dividing the total cost of teen drinking by the estimated number of
teen drinkers, the study, from the nonprofit research group Pacific
Institute for Research and Evaluation, estimates that every underage
drinker costs society an average of $4,680 a year.

"Alcohol kills four times the number of kids that illegal drugs
do," Ted Miller, one of the study's lead researchers. "We're not
spending much at all on this problem, despite the size of it."

The first paragraph starts off with an apples-to-oranges error,
comparing costs of one thing (teenage drinking) to expenses on
another (Katrina reconstruction). What the federal government has
paid to date for Katrina reconstruction isn't a very good measure
of Katrina's damage. Estimates of Katrina damage start at $100
billion and go up from there. But to be comparable you'd have to
come up with a set of Katrina damage estimates that was consistent
with the methods and valuations used in the teenage drinking study.
The Katrina estimates rarely consider anything beyond property
damage. Certainly there is a lot more cost "such as lost work
hours and lowered quality of life," but putting a value on that
sort of thing is hard to do, and the result would mostly be to
inflate the costs and confuse the issues.

Most likely, that's why these researchers do just that. They
want to get attention, and one easy way to con the gullible is by
running up a huge tab. No problem: that's why spreadsheets were
invented: just fudge the numbers until you get the results you
want. Sometimes, as this story demonstrates, you can even fudge
the numbers so far the results become absurd. $62 billion is a
lot of money: two Buffetts, half a Katrina, several months of
Iraq war (no clear agreement on how to audit that; the US budget
there shortchanges the real costs worse than the US budget for
Katrina repair). It's hard to see how we never noticed a cost of
that magnitude, although I suppose there are other examples --
e.g., global warming.

However, repeating the study's headlines isn't news -- just PR.
To make any sense out of this as a story, we need more info: who are
these clowns? who do they work for? what are their methods? how do
those methods stack up against standard scientific practices? This
isn't on-the-spot reporting, like at a car wreck or plane crash,
where limited information may still be newsworthy. This type of story
only matters if you can put it into some sort of context. Otherwise,
it's just nonsense. Which in this case is probably what in depth
analysis would finally conclude. Guess McClatchy had some space to
kill. It's not like there's any real news to report.